4 mos post maze in NSR and feeling great

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Posted by Tim Hawkins on August 02, 2002 at 12:12:06:

I want to jump in and add what many others have said before. This site is worth it’s weight in gold to those of us who have had afib problems - and made the choice or are thinking about making the choice - to have the Maze. To Carl, Steve, Ed, Jack, and all the others who contribute to this site, I would like to say thank you. When I open Internet Explorer it seems that the first place I go is to Favorites and then this site.

I just passed 4 mos post maze and am feeling great in NSR. I haven’t been out of NSR since Apr. 14 when I had a 3-hour run. I had forgotten how good this could feel! I continue to increase my hill climbing, walking, jogging, and other outdoor activities. I have a road just behind my house that starts at 6000 ft and climbs to 7000 feet in just 2 miles. The grade runs between 8 and 12%. I have been using it as a yardstick to gauge my progress. I have a Polar S810 watch that lets me download to my computer. This watch is a great tool.

Today is a big day because I am now off of all heart drugs. During the last month I have slowly backed off of Toprol and am stopping Rythmol as of yesterday. I was on 100 mg of Toprol and 300 mg of Rythmol. I am 6’ 2” tall 218 lbs. I stopped the Toprol 2 weeks ago and noticed that my resting heart rate went from 80 to 90. I am concerned because I know that that is too high. I am wondering if it will also increase more after stopping the Rythmol? Another change is that I now have PVC’s from time to time. Before the maze I had only PACs and almost never a PVC. Now it has flipped. PACs use to stop when I brought my HR up with exercise. I notice that PVCs don’t decrease at all with exercise and sometimes increase. I can’t always feel them. I purchased a holter monitor a couple of years ago to track things like this without having to go to the Doctor. I have learned that the interval between the beat preceding the PVC and the beat following the PVC is equal to the time of two normal beats and represents what the books call - a full compensatory pause. The shape of most of my wide QRS PVC beats is the same. I wonder what is causing this? Could it have something to do with scare tissue from the maze? I have had no other heart problems.

Some of you on this site have wondered if you were having PACs or PVCs. The best was to figure this out is to wear a holter. I have found that a Polar watch will do the same thing - at least my S810 will. The reason the watch works is that the watch will not detect the wide QRS of a PVC as a beat. When the watch is set to record to memory in the “R to R” mode it will not record PVC’s as a beat. It will only record the normal beat before and the normal beat after the PVC. When it plots this on a rate graph, it will plot each PVC as a severe drop in the rate because it sees it as a pause. In my case the compensatory pause associated with the PVC will plot as a rate equal to one half the rate just before and just after the PVC. I have worn my holter at the same time as the Polar and this is very accurate in my case. It is a quick and easy way to see and count PVCs per minute. This would not work with Paired PVCs(two in a row) or Runs of PVCs (ventricular tachycardia). I’m sorry if I went into too much detail about this stuff. I am just excited that the Polar will allow me to do this without all the wires and equipment.

My main question is how can I lower my resting heart rate and reduce PVCs ??? Will both of these things just get better with time? How much time? I will start today with a serious effort to drop a few pounds (30). I signed up with Weight Watchers yesterday. Does anyone know if there has ever been any research on the relationship of body fat and resting heart rate? I haven’t been able to find anything on it. Before the Maze and when I was not taking drugs, my resting rate was 64 and my max was 168. That was about 3 years ago. I am currently 55.

Tim

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