When you are diagnosed with AF or other kinds of irregular heartbeats, such as premature ventricular contraction and increased and irregular heartbeats, it can make your heart work less efficiently and provide insufficient blood flow to your brain, heart, and adrenal gland, and cause dementia, Parkinson’s disease, adrenal fatigue, and allergies.

Furthermore, the irregular heartbeats can lead to blood clots and cause strokes. The following factors can speed up your heartbeats and make your heart skip beats sometimes.

  1. Sympathetic nerves increase heart rate, whereas parasympathetic nerves cause it to decrease. When you drink too much coffee or have too much stress, you stimulate your sympathetic nervous system.
  2. Fight or flight hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline, can increase heart rate. When you are in acute stress, such as a car accident, your adrenaline can go up suddenly.
  3. When blood pressure drops too low, heart rate increases automatically.
  4. An imbalance of estrogen and progesterone can affect your heart. That is why women tend to develop AF after menopause, because progesterone, the relaxing hormone, drops much more than estrogen, the stimulating hormone.
  5. An imbalance of different hormones and neurotransmitters. For instance, if our calming chemicals, such as GABA or serotonin, are low, the stimulating hormones, such as estrogen, adrenaline, and dopamine, become relatively stronger. Your nervous system can then become unstable.

What are the daily-life contributors to an irregular heartbeat condition?

  1. Caffeine, especially if you drink coffee with an empty stomach in the morning. In Prevention Magazine, there is an article that recommends drinking coffee around 10 to 11 am, after you’ve had a little breakfast.
    In most European countries, workers have a coffee break after two hours of work and a full breakfast. In the Chinese tradition, we usually drink tea after a meal, especially after lunch when you feel slightly tired. If you wake up ready to go, you really do not need coffee to stimulate your nervous system.
    People who wake up from very deep sleep and feel drowsy for the next two hours may use coffee to stimulate their nervous system so that they can get onto the road without causing an accident. When we first get up, our blood cortisol level is rising and our heartbeat is increasing. If you drink coffee on an empty stomach, the stimulating effect is strong and instant, which can set your sympathetic nervous system at a higher tone for the whole day.
  2. Low sugar levels stimulate adrenaline release, which also speeds up your heart rate. When you drink coffee on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, the caffeine quickly induces insulin release, causing a sharp drop in blood sugar. If you run afterwards, the adrenaline rush can make your heart pound even harder with the increased sympathetic activity.
  3. Excessive exercising also can induce adrenaline and cortisol release.
  4. Sleep deprivation: when you do not get enough sleep, your cortisol level can go up temporarily, which may increase your heart rate. Furthermore, your nervous system becomes more sensitive to environmental changes.
  5. Certain medications, such as high dosages of painkillers, can increase your heart rate. A young lady developed severe pain in her vaginal area after she used an over-the-counter anti-yeast cream for a while. The pain was so severe that she could not do her normal work. She was on a very high dosage of painkiller, and her heart rate went up so much that her physician advised her to see Boston Acupuncturist to lower her pain level and heart rate.

How to manage an irregular heartbeat condition?

Breathing exercises: deep breathing in and out at 6 breaths per minute can reduce irregular heartbeat.

Tai Ji: Dr. Jin, in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research (1989), indicates that practicing Tai ji can lower cortisol and adrenaline levels even though your heart rate is slightly elevated during the practice. Therefore, you increase your heart function without increasing your stress hormone level.

Try to avoid constant adrenaline rushes, such as multitasking, skipping meals, or having a high-sugar diet.

Improve your nerve function: Vitamin B6 helps metabolize amino acids and fat and preserves your nerve function. When people with anxiety are taking antacid medications, they have more frequent panic attacks, combined with racing heartbeats, because their digestive systems cannot absorb vitamins and minerals properly.

Older people tend to develop irregular heartbeats if they do not have a proper diet. You might hear your colleagues complain that their parents get very nervous over small things. This happens because, as you age, your digestive system cannot absorb vitamins as efficiently.

You may take many kinds of food supplements to provide more vitamins, but if your stomach does not absorb the vitamins efficiently, your nervous system will not be balanced. Foods that are rich in vitamin B6 are eggs, meat, liver and kidney products, cheese, nuts, whole grains, fish, and potatoes.

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