Name: The Best Diet for Treating Atrial Fibrillation
Uploaded: 2022-10-18T23:48:56.000Z
Duration: 8 min 28 s
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"The Best Diet for Treating Atrial Fibrillation"

Atrial fibrillation, or Afib, is the most common clinical arrhythmia,

affecting millions of Americans, recognized as a global public

health problem due to its significant burden of death and

disease resulting from stroke, heart attacks, and heart failure.

Is there any particular diet that may help prevent or treat it?

Well, recently we learned what not to eat.

Low-carb diets are associated with increased risk of developing

atrial fibrillation for a variety of reasons.

First of all, people on low-carb diets may be eating fewer anti-inflammatory

foods like vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

Reducing intake of these anti-inflammatory foods may be

one of the important mechanisms for the risk of getting Afib.

means increased protein and fat consumption,

which may stimulate oxidative stress, the formation of free radicals,

which was also demonstrated to be associated with Afib.

Finally, the effect could result from the increased risk

of other cardiovascular disease, which can set you up for Afib,

and indeed, low-carb diets are associated with an increased risk

of overall mortality, dying from any cause, as well as

specifically dying from cardiovascular disease and dying from cancer.

Dietary recommendations for patients with heart rhythm disorders

is essentially the opposite of a low-carb diet, centered on

a day-to-day basis around fruits, vegetables, grains, beans,

and nuts, with seafood at most a few days a week;

eggs, dairy, and chicken on more like a once-a-week basis;

and other meat on more like a once-a-month basis, in part

because we're trying to cut down on saturated and trans fats.

Whole-food plant-based diets emphasizing whole grains,

legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils),

and excluding most (or all) animal products may play a special role,

as they not only maximize protective foods,

but also exclude potentially harmful animal foods.

For example, there is persuasive evidence that avoidance

of certain foods may beneficially affect atrial fibrillation,

such as the avoidance of dark fish and alcohol.

The dark fish thing comes from the Framingham Heart Study.

By dark fish, they mean salmon, swordfish, bluefish,

And they found in an exploratory analysis that those participants

who consumed more than 4 servings of darkfish

like salmon or sardines a week were at a whopping

6-fold higher risk of developing Afib, though

the intake of fish in general didn't seem to have any effect.

We're not exactly sure why alcohol is so bad when

but we might have as much as an 8% increase

associated with each drink one might have per day,

though drinking coffee or caffeine in general does not seem

Where plant-based diets really shine, though,

Plant-based diets may reduce the likelihood of many

traditional risk factors that are associated with Afib, including

hypertension, hyperthyroidism, obesity, and diabetes.

High blood pressure is one of the major risk factors,

accounting for about one-fifth of all new cases of Afib,

which is where plant-based diets can come in:

improving vasodilation, the ability for your arteries to expand naturally,

in addition to the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, and

and decreased blood viscosity or sludginess.

In terms of hyperthyroidism, excluding all animal foods

from one's diet was associated with half the prevalence

of hyperthyroidism compared with those who eat meat,

with vegetarians and fish-only diets associated

Having excess body fat may be responsible for about

another fifth of all Afib cases. But the good news is significant 

with a 6-fold greater freedom from atrial fibrillation.

You can see that those with Afib who started out overweight, but

5 years later only 10%  ended up with Afib,

whereas those who lost less than 3% or gained weight,

Here are all the atrial fibrillation risk factors that can be prevented,

arrested or even reversed with a healthy enough plant-based diet:

high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, obesity, systemic

inflammation, and heart disease. In light of these findings,

dietary modifications are of paramount importance.

But you don't know if it could actually cure atrial fibrillation

Unfortunately, all we have are case reports,

An 82-year-old man presents with polypharmacy,

meaning on a bunch of different medications due to

coronary artery disease, a heart attack history,

ischemic cardiomyopathy, high cholesterol,

high blood pressure, and persistent atrial fibrillation, who

presented with memory loss, cognitive impairment, fatigue and weakness.

Now, if you're not going to change the diet and lifestyle that led to all

the problems in the first place, then drugs can certainly be

Yet commonly used blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering

medications provide actually little absolute risk reduction