Atrial fibrillation, or A fib for short, is the most common heart rhythm issue that plagues people. About 30% of people will experience this rhythm disorder at some time in their lives, an issue that becomes more and more likely as we age.

The rhythm is typically experienced as the sudden onset of breathlessness and lightheadedness, and sometimes chest pain, even while you are sitting or relaxing. This is because, with A fib, the heart rate is typically in the range of 150-220 beats per minute, way above the normal resting heart rate of 60-70 beats per minute. It’s the result of chaotic electrical signals originating from the atria of the heart, the normally thin-walled sacks at the top of the heart on the right and left side, i.e., the right and left atria. Beyond the symptoms of breathlessness and lightheadedness, A fib puts you at risk for stroke—not mini-strokes, but large catastrophic strokes. This is because there is a passive sack or appendage attached to the side of the left atrium called the left atrial appendage. Because during a bout of A fib, the atria stop their normal contractions in synchrony with the powerful ventricles, the main pumping chambers of the heart, blood stasis or standstill occurs, allowing the formation of blood clots in the left atrial appendage. Should the blood clot fragment or dislodge, it can go to your brain, resulting in a catastrophic stroke. This is why, in conventional cardiac care, blood thinners are administered almost immediately with the onset of A. fib.

The management of this abnormal heart rhythm is fraught with difficulties and complications: toxic pharmaceuticals, procedures such as DC cardioversion in which a large and painful electrical shock is delivered with paddles to your chest, and others. So it is a good idea to take steps to avoid ever having this abnormal heart rhythm. Conventional advice typically includes achieving such things as controlling blood sugar and blood pressure with prescription drugs, or losing excess weight. But this leaves out some hugely important strategies that you can readily adopt that reduce your potential for experiencing A fib, as well as numerous other health problems. So that is the topic we consider here in this episode of the Defiant Health podcast.

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Books:

Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed

Sleep issues represent a major struggle for millions of people: too little sleep, trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, early morning awakenings followed by difficulty falling back asleep. Some people complain that, despite having a full night of sleep, they awake feeling like they didn’t sleep at all, struggling with sleepiness, fog, and fatigue all through waking hours. There are also known associations of health conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and Parkinson’s disease with disruptions of sleep.

The science that explores the role of gastrointestinal microbes in sleep are yielding new and exciting lessons. Recently, for instance, lack of sleep has been shown to adversely impact the composition of the GI microbiome, i.e., there is a bidirectional cross-talk: the brain communicates with the gut, the gut communicates with the brain in ways that influence sleep. But new observations are also emerging from our fermentation projects, especially our yogurts in which we ferment unique microbial species to very high counts, increasing the number of microbes a hundred, or even a thousand-fold, efforts that are yielding new lessons that have not yet been formally described in human scientific studies. So let’s discuss some of these interesting lessons that are emerging involving sleep.

________________________________________________________________________________

For BiotiQuest probiotics including Sugar Shift, go here.

A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
_________________________________________________________________________________

Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*

For 12% off every order of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go here.

Support the show

Books:

Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed

You’ve likely heard the headlines gushing about the weight loss effects of the GLP-1 agonist class of drugs, agents that go by names like Wegovy, Mounjaro, Rebelsus and others. Doctors are declaring these drugs as breakthroughs or even magical, witnessing the rapid and dramatic weight loss they can achieve.

People appear willing to accept the side-effects of nausea, vomiting, even bowel obstruction, a catastrophic complication, or thyroid cancer, or pancreatitis that can irreversibly damage your pancreas and make you a type 1 diabetic. They also accept the costs that vary widely, depending on who dispenses it, but not uncommonly hundreds of dollars, even over a thousand dollars a month. And doctors jump at the chance to prescribe these drugs, as they often have arrangements with the dispensing pharmacy for kickbacks in one form or another. Prescribe the drug, make a lot of money, for many doctors an irresistible temptation.

People lose weight and even can become non-type 2 diabetic and modestly reduce risk for heart disease—so what’s not to like?

Plenty. That is the topic of discussion today on the Defiant Health podcast, a place where you hear ideas you cannot hear anywhere else because we dig deeper, are not swayed by big payoffs, and thumb our nose at conventional wisdom. The GLP-1 agonist drugs are not miraculous, but invite health disaster or hold you hostage for the rest of your life, shelling out money to enrich the pharmaceutical industry and doctors.

________________________________________________________________________________

For BiotiQuest probiotics including Sugar Shift, go here.

A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
_________________________________________________________________________________

Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*

For 12% off every order of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go here.

Support the show

Books:

Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed