Exercise Induced A-Fib

Triathlon Forum
1

Even Under the Best Circumstances

The above link is to a post in the lavender room concerning my wife. I will not rehash that discussion here, nor will I post updates to this thread. I will continue to update that thread as thing progress.

I am posting this here because we now have a cardiologist that is a triathlete, and he has a theory as to why she had a stroke, since she has none of the normal risk factors. He thinks she has Exercise Inducted A-Fib that was not detected. For a year or more she had been having disappointing performances in races. She would do a great long run, rest, and then have “bad day” at the race she was prepping for. She adjusted training, nutrition, sleep, etc. and nothing seemed to have any affect. In fact, she could not determine a cause and effect pattern. The doctor thinks it was A-Fib that would manifest itself during strenuous activity and the stress of a race. Unlike the average person with A-Fib, that will suddenly not feel good, be out of breath, or feel their heart racing, my wife, being a 62 year old life long athlete with years of experience, just felt it was a bad day and a fast heart rate was normal.

They are putting a ILR in today in hopes of finding a true cause of her stroke, but until she recovers enough to begin to exercise it is going to probably remain a guess.

Just something (a data point) to think about.

2

This kind of mirrors what I experienced. For a few years prior to being diagnosed with afib, my performance had been noticeably dropping. I still had good days, but also some unexplained really bad days. My GP simply summed it up as “you’re in your mid-50s, you’re just getting older, that’s what happens”. I had one race about a year before my diagnosis, where I felt I was in peak condition, tapered, and felt great on the start line. 100 yards into the swim, I knew my race was over. Barely finished the swim, did a slow grind on the bike, and walked the entire run.

Just weeks after I got my ablation, despite being out of shape and several pounds heavier, I was constantly knocking off Strava PRs that I had set a few years earlier, despite feeling like I was taking it easy. So my decline over the previous few years was definitely not due to “just getting older…”

3

My Afib developed first when I was in the middle of a race. Once I saw the cardiologist, it converted back to NSR with the help of Flecainide. But, even after being back in normal rhythm, if I exercised, I would go back into Afib after 3-4 miles running.

I read something recently that there’s a fair number of people, over the age of 40, who are walking around with Afib and are not aware.