Category: lifestyle
plant based resources
There are 4 guiding principles to a whole food plant based (WFPB) diet Eat whole plants – grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, nuts Avoid processed and artificial foods Avoid added oils and sugars Avoid animal sourced foods – meat, fish, eggs, dairy The China Study is the largest WFPB study. Forks over Knives is a good…
paleo diet?
Is the paleo diet safe for you? UC Davis website sums it up best. And just as a reminder – the average caveman lived no more than 40 years old. If you want to lose weight quickly, paleo may work. If on the other hand you want a long and healthy life, stick to a…
coffee and heart arrhythmias – time to grind the data
DISCLAIMER – This blog post was written before drinking my morning cup of coffee! Some thoughts may be blurry! SECOND DISCLAIMER – the “grind the data” phrase was from an article in JACC Electrophsysiology – I wish I had come up with it on my own! This is as far as I got with latte…
meditation – jerry seinfeld
Meditation has been shown to decrease symptoms and burden of atrial fibrillation. I practice it daily and also recommend it to my patients. I started meditation at age 7 and had been practicing intermittently until about 5 years ago when I saw this Jerry Seinfeld video. After this I started practicing daily. If you are…
yoga and atrial fibrillation
Dr. DJ Lakkiredy published an excellent study on the effects of yoga (+meditation) on atrial fibrillation:
sleep hygeine
Too many patients ask me for a “sleeping pill”. These drugs are habit forming and over time lose their effectiveness. They also lead to poor sleep quality, drowsiness in the morning, amnesia etc. Others try self medicating with alcohol, marijuana or other over the counter “sleeping aids” like diphenhydramine (Benadryl). “Sleep hygeine” is the best…
sleep well or die
Lack of sleep has been correlated with disease and death. It seems sleep deprivation modulates the autonomic tone and therefore leads to increase in risk of cardiac arrhythmias. The next study is quite interesting – either too much (>8 h per night) or too little (<7 h per night) of sleep increases mortality. It starts…
obesity and AFIB
Atrial fibrillation has a strong correlation with obesity. A study from Australia showed that if obese patients lost 10% of their weight, they had better outcomes. Another study shows the same. REVERSE-AF was a large, well publicised study with similar results. It seems that a lot of these studies come from Australia, where patients have…
not a good week for alcohol enthusiasts!!
This has not been a good week for “moderate” alcohol drinkers. There has been a barrage of articles which make me re-think what “moderate” alcohol intake is. Just 2 days ago I wrote this blog. Look at this BBC article. This was a half a million patient prospective Chinese study that indicated that if a…