Background
In mid-January of this year, while at a martial arts class, warming up, my pulse suddenly felt funny. It was beating irregularly. I’ve had some arrhythmia before, but it’s usually just like my pulse “yawned” or momentarily forgot about pulsing but then snapped back to attention.
This was different.
I’ve since described it as “my heart was Buddy Rich and Neal Pert and neither were playing the same song.” It started around 6:15 pm and finally settled back into sinus rhythm around 1 or 2 am, while I was laying on a hospital bed (outpatient) in the Emergency Department; I had checked in around 9 pm, when it was still going. The admitting nurse did an EKG and confirmed I was in Atrial Fibrillation.
A few weeks ago I saw a cardiologist. He advised me to cut out all alcohol, caffeine, and stimulant medications. I was on prescription methylphenidate (generic Ritalin), a relatively low dose, all things considered, but I was instructed to go off of that completely. I was never a frequent drinker, and the last time I drank anything was a month prior, but I did drink 1 cup of coffee every morning. The latter was a bit harder to give up. For the methylphenidate, I agreed to go down to 10 mg (I was taking 20 mg most days) and take that until my supply ran out. I had about 2-3 months remaining.
Not directly related to this, my doctor found my A1C levels to be a bit high in the acceptable range, and my body was showing signs of prediabetes. I’ve learned that this means “if you change nothing, you will develop diabetes, likely Type 2, but if you make big changes now you can turn this around.”
I don’t want the diabetes.
At the time I had been going to bed earlier and getting up around 6am to go to the gym to walk for an hour. I needed to do more.
So the issues I was facing were:
- Cardiac
- Cognitive
- Endocrine
Overview
This is a long-haul and I’m NOT going to finish this in a year. But this has been a rather preoccupying focus for me for most of this year, and it’s affected me and my decisions in some pretty significant ways, so I felt it warranted inclusion.
The metrics I’m measuring:
- Bringing my A1C levels down to a safer range
- Losing about 30% of my body mass in weight; I have learned that visceral fat puts more stress on my body which becomes more pronounced as I get older
- Ideally not having any more AFib incidences (Narrator voice: There were more.), but realistically learning enough that I can make them rare and manageable.
- Being able to continue to function cognitively (Narrator voice: There were challenges.)