Heart Strangeness – Page 2

From Wacky To Normal

Finish screen for today’s 6,000 meter rowing session. Though my pace was a constant and easy average of 2:22/500 meters, heart rate started out too high and got even higher. Most of the time the heart rate readout was blank, as it was for this screenshot.

If you read yesterday’s entry you might remember that yesterday was a not fine day 9 which was plagued with atrial fibrillation. That Afib persisted the rest of yesterday evening, all night and was still present this morning when the workout session started.

For today’s first session I decided to start with rowing instead of the SkiErg. First, I did a 3 minute rowing warmup and didn’t even bother putting on the heart strap because I could feel the heart flip-flopping around. After that warmup I donned the heart strap for the main rowing session which was an online 6,000 meters with two other people. One of them was a guy in Spain and the other was a woman in England. My heart rate display was too erratic to display most of the time and when it did make its appearance its rate was quite a bit too high for the low effort level.

After the online 6K I did an offline 4K and the heart continued to be wacky with atrial fibrillation. But at least I did a tiny bit of sweating.

I had a brief inner debate as to whether to do anything on the SkiErg because atrial fibrillation really takes all the fun out of it. I decided to do a leisurely 200 Calories on the SkiErg because the lazy part of me was too lazy to work very hard at winning the debate against a SkiErg workout.

Though the SkiErg pace was very easy, heart rate started out too high and climbed even higher for a little over 8 minutes. At about 8 minutes and 17 seconds heart rate normalized. An exclamation mark is appropriate because I was surprised!

Screenshots of the Apple Watch ECG analysis before (on your left) and after (on your right) the SkiErg workout.

Here’s the part relating to the “Apple Watch” tag for this blog entry: I recently got a new Apple Watch which has the capability to take an ECG measurement. Before the Before today’s workouts I used its ECG feature to see if it would agree with what I felt in the heart area (that fluttery, flippy-flop feeling which is rather annoying) and it did. It announced that I was having Atrial Fibrillation. After the SkiErg session, I used it to take another ECG reading. This time it announced the result of “Sinus Rhythm,” which is the medical jargon for normal heart rhythm.

Perhaps the additional SkiErg workout was what was needed to straighten out the heartstrings.

Report for today’s 6,000 meter rowing session.

Graphs for today’s 6,000 meter rowing session.

Finish screen for the 4K rowing session.

Chart and data for today’s 200 Calorie SkiErg session.

Closeups of points on 200 Calorie SkiErg session before and after Atrial fibrillation went away.

Happy rowing to you!

Four Days and Counting

Today is the 4th day in a row with no added salt.

The focus remains on heart behavior in absence of any customary added salt. Today is the fourth day of that experiment which began on September 15th and it is the fourth day in a row without Afib, otherwise known as atrial fibrillation or what I frequently call “heart strangeness.”

Today’s workout was 200 Calories on the SkiErg at a bit faster pace than yesterday, followed by 1,000 meters rowing.

Chart and data for today’s 200 C SkiErg session.

Finish screen for today’s 1,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro report for today’s 1,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 1,000 meter rowing session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 1,000 meter rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Flatline Heart Means Flat Food

Today’s heart strangeness influenced making a decision to avoid added salt for the remainder of today.

Today’s workouts were bothered again by heart irregularities. As a result, I decided to do only a SkiErg session of 200 Calories followed by a short rowing session to test whether heart rate would behave during rowing. It didn’t behave during rowing. Instead of acting like a proper heart, it flatlined. So I limited rowing to only that one brief, easy session of 500 meters.

The symptoms of heart strangeness today were the irregular, fluttery feeling and heart rate excessively high for the effort.

Something I’ve been wondering about is whether or not my fondness for salt is any part of the catalyst for heart irregularity. So after today’s minimalist workout, I decided to forego adding any salt to any of my food for the rest of the day.

The first and main workout today was 200 Calories on the SkiErg. Based on years of past experience wearing a heart strap, heart rate was much too high for the effort, by about 40% or more elevation in BPM. Though this HR graph does not show irregular heart beat, I could feel it feeling fluttery/abnormal during the workout.

The only rowing session today was a tiny, easy-pace 500 meters. Heart rate was too irregular to be displayed at any time, which results in recorded heart rate of zero.

Graphs for today’s 500 meter test session. The heart rate graph is flatlined because heart rate is logged as zero when it is too irregular for RowPro to display it.

Happy rowing to you!

Coffee Not The Problem

Today’s workouts were hampered by irregular heart rhythm and too-high heart rate. It started yesterday evening, persisted all night and through this morning’s workout. Yesterday there was no coffee consumed at all, so coffee wasn’t the problem.

During the SkiErg session heart rate was a bit irregular and 30 to 40 BPM too high for the effort level, from beginning to end. During the rowing session heart rate became more irregular and remained too high for the effort level.

After today’s workouts I had breakfast with coffee and the heart’s behavior returned to normal. Perhaps it needs coffee.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing.

Happy rowing to you!

Daily Dose Earlier Than Yesterday

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.

Today’s awakening was after only 5 hours 35 minutes sleep. But that was okay because I’d been sleeping a bit too much and this balances things out.

The first of two workouts was on the SkiErg targeting 200 Calories. The second was on the rowing machine targeting 10,000 meters.

The graphs tell the main story for today’s workouts. Near the end of the SkiErg session, heart transitioned from regular and normal rate to irregular and a bit too high. It remained a bit irregular and a bit too high throughout the rowing session, but not problematically so.

Finish screen for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Happy rowing to you.

Pac Man Motivation

Glutathione in your body acts like many little Pac Men working on your behalf to gobble up toxins.

Detours and excuses abound, to avoid working out.

Entertain some rational consideration of any one of the benefits of working out, however, and you can gain some motivation to detour the detours.

Today’s featured motivation is something you can either pay about $20 an ounce for or which you can get for free if you workout. It is called glutathione.

One doctor whom I heard mention glutathione recently said that glutathione in your body acts like a Pac Man which gobbles up toxins.

Xlnt! A new motivation to add to the list of good reasons for working out!

In other words (if you don’t know what “xlnt” means), “Excellent!”

Funny that I’ve never before thought of Pac Man as anything other than one of the first and most wildly popular of early video games.

You can buy glutathione supplement at places like Results RNA website which features bottles of it like the one pictured below, for either about $40 or $75 for the 2 or 4 ounce bottles. But why buy it? How do you know that spraying it in the mouth is an effective way to boost glutathione? I’d rather have it made “in-house” in my own body. Of course for some people who are perhaps bedridden or for some other reason not able to workout, it might be worth considering. My personal opinion is that personally manufactured glutathione probably works best of all. (I have no affiliation with the “Results RNA” website and can’t say anything pro or con regarding their products.)

Today’s workouts were hampered to a degree by annoying heart behavior. They consisted of a 200 Calorie SkiErg session and a 10K rowing session. Each of the workouts caused some sweating and generated new Pac-Men to gobble up toxins.

The heart rate graphs for the 10K rowing are very messy looking because heart rate was so irregular that the Polar Heart Strap transmitter and Concept 2 PM3-mounted heart rate signal receiver had a difficult time figuring out what to display. Heart straps on the chest tend to be more accurate than wrist-mounted heart rate detectors but the Apple Watch seemed to have an easier time keeping track of heart rate than the Polar Heart Strap did today. Perhaps it was something to do with the irregular heartbeat.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing. It didn’t seem to matter what effort level I rowed. If I rowed moderately or a lot easier, heart rate remained in the 140 to 150 BPM range which was too high for either effort level.

Screen shot of Apple Watch’s heart rate graph display for 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Sweating Is Another Of Many Good Reasons

When I looked for confirmation about sweating removing toxins, I found something about it on this website at mindbodygreen.com

Sweating is very helpful in removing toxins from the human body. Cool. Another good reason to row.

While I didn’t first learn about sweat removing toxins from the mindbodygreen.com article or the doctor pictured above, it was another doctor from whom I first heard it.

Enduring exercise at a level that will promote at least a little bit of sweating is easier if a person is aware of the immediate benefits.

A verse in the Bible says “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” I’m paraphrasing it. That’s not an exact quote from any particular translation of the Bible.

The particular verse, if you’d like to look it up in your favorite translation of the Bible, is Genesis 3:19.

It (Genesis 3:19) seemed like it might be a curse or punishment, the first time I read it. But I changed my mind about it a long time ago and decided it was just a health and lifestyle recommendation from the Good Doctor of doctors.

The fact that sweating removes nasty toxins like heavy metals from our bodies is more confirmation that it is good advice from our Creator.

Of course if sweat removes toxins then it follows that taking a shower after sweating is a good thing to do, to help wash the toxins off the body.

Unless you are allergic to water.

That would be a serious problem, to have an allergy to water.

Today’s sweat-generating workouts each produced a little sweat. First there was a 200 Calorie SkiErg session. That was followed by setting up the rowing machine for 10,000 meters and rowing 1,022 meters and stopping. I stopped, because that annoying heart behavior was happening again. Heart rate irregular and much too fast for the effort level. So I took an aspirin break, ate something & drank water, then returned and rowed a 9,000 meter session. That was all for today.

Yes, I took a shower afterward. 🙂

Heart strangeness first appeared in the last part of the SkiErg session.

Report for what was supposed to be 10,000 meters but which was only 1,022 meters due to an aspirin break.

Report for the 9,000 meter session. Notice that heart rate is abnormally high at the end of each of the nine splits.

RowPro graph for the 9,000 meter session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for the 9,000 meter session.

During the 9,000 meter session when heart rate was visible it reached 210 BPM a few times on the RowPro display. This Apple Watch view of its independent record of heart rate during the 9K confirms the new high of 210 BPM.

Happy rowing to you.

Persistence Pays Off

Or was it the salad?

First impression from today’s first few minutes on the SkiErg were slight amazement. Heart rate remained low, even though I was starting out faster than the two previous sessions (Sept 2nd and Sept 4th) when heart rate was irregular and also insisted on being way too high for the pace / effort level.

Not sure if I should believe that it would continue normally, I watched it closely with every stroke. The heart can be tricky and deceptive, you know. But it continued to behave well on the SkiErg. In fact, it behaved very well and its average rate was less than 100 BPM during the first 100 Calories. During the second 100 Calories I added 5 intervals of 10 Calories each and heart behavior remained very good. The overall effort for today’s SkiErg session was RPE Level 2.

Once the SkiErg session was over, I wondered if the heart’s good behavior would continue through the rowing session. RowPro was set to 10,000 meters and I decided to row a bit faster than either of the previous two 10K rowing sessions to put the heart to a little test.

The results were about as good as I could have hoped for. Heart rate disappeared momentarily, nine times during the session. But I didn’t feel any fluttery feeling of irregular heart beat. The rowing session was done at RPE Level 4. For a bit more more motivation during the rowing session, I played the screen recording of a 10K session done in July 2018. It had been done at a pace of 2:17.5 and I prodded myself to stay ahead of it. It’s link is Indoor Rowing 10K 07062018 .

Eager to attribute today’s heart behavior to some cause, however illogical that is, I first decided that today’s good heart behavior was due to persisting in doing workouts during the previous sessions, even though the heart had acted cantankerously irregular and its rate was much too high during those two sessions.

But then I remembered something said by the doctor who had talked about microbiomes and the diet and how some of our most beneficial microbiomes thrive on an abundance of fiber in our food. They actually digest it and get nourishment for their little microbiome bodies from fiber in our food.

So it’s equally if not more likely that today’s good heart behavior is attributable largely to the gigantic salad which was the main course for last night’s dinner. To paraphrase something the doctor said about how fruits and vegetables are so amazingly good for us: It’s almost as if they are designed to be beneficial to us.

Heart strangeness was notable for its absence.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Coffee Lover Sidestepped

Patience is a virtue. The part of my mind that likes coffee the most is not patient. As I changed into workout clothes, it tried to strike a bargain to delay the start of the workout for the sake of making a pot of coffee so that coffee would be ready already afterwards.

As if simply making a pot of coffee was all it wanted. After coffee was made, it would want just a little sip, etc., and it would try to arrange for something else with the ultimate objective of avoiding doing any workout whatsoever.

Tabling its suggestion of making a cup of coffee, I sidestepped whatever other suggestions for further delay it had in its subliminal mind.

I was inspired to go directly to the workout this morning because heart rate had been irregular and too high since sometime between 8 and 9 PM last night.

Eating a tiny bit later than usual late-ish evening eating might have had something to do with it. At least that was a speculation that crossed my mind this afternoon when I listened to part of a talk given by a doctor whose specialty includes special attention to the microbiomes in the human body and when he mentioned that they all have their own circadian rhythms.

Not that there couldn’t be other reasons for my heart to have been persistently irregular and too fast since yesterday evening, but that reason sounded as good as any of the other unproved possibilities.

Clinging to the hope that if I changed into workout clothes and “just did it” there would be a repeat of the sudden return to normal as had happened during the rowing workout of September 2nd, I started without further delay. The SkiErg session was first. Two hundred Calories was burned on the SkiErg but heart rate remained too high and fluttery-feeling, irregular from start to finish.

Easy-going, slow skiing was done for most of the SkiErg session with the exception of three tiny increases of pace near the end. But on September 2nd, the heart had remained stubbornly irregular during all the time on the SkiErg also.

So I held out hope that heart behavior would return to normal during the rowing session and set up RowPro for 10,000 meters. As a rowing “companion” and additional motivation I used another monitor to play a YouTube video of a 10,000 meter session I’d rowed in 2018. That session had been done at an average pace of about 2:20/500 meters, which was slower than I wanted to row today. Its name on YouTube is Indoor Rowing 10K constant pace 04302018 .

My rowing goal was to stay ahead of the 10K on the YouTube video by rowing a pace averaging at least 2:15/500 meters. The pace goal was satisfied but heart did not return to normal behavior. Bad heart!

Heart behavior did eventually return to normal rate and regular rhythm but not until after I had breakfast and coffee. Go figure.

Should I have listened to the wily subconscious voice when it tried to delay and divert me? I believe I made the right choice because its delays and other subterfuge would have probably led to doing a workout late in the afternoon, if at all.

RowPro graph for today’s 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Fourth Time Was The Charm

Today I experienced a little amelioration. Isaiah 53:6 speaks of the best amelioration of all.

At around 3 AM this morning after I woke and then returned to bed, heart rate became irregular.

Mostly it was annoying but it happens so often that I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

Early in mid morning I started doing the daily workout by setting the SkiErg for a 250 Calorie countdown.

Leisure skiing should have resulted in a low heart rate of around 100 BPM but it was still irregular and heart rate immediately went much higher than normal for that low effort level.

Instead of skiing for the entire 250 Calories, I quit after 50 Calories and took a break for water and 80 mg of aspirin.

Ordinarily, if there is such as thing as ordinary with irregular heartbeat, it has been my experience that it is inclined to become regular after taking an aspirin.

Returning to the SkiErg after waiting more than 30 minutes for the aspirin to circulate, I set up a session to count down 200 Calories, which was the remainder of the original 250 Calorie session.

After skiing for 100 Calories, heart rate was still irregular and much too high for the effort level so I cut the session short and took another break for more aspirin and water.

Taking that much time to do so few Calories on the SkiErg is very unusual. After another 30 minutes to allow the second 80 mg dose of aspirin to enter the system, I returned to the SkiErg and setup a session for the last remaining 100 Calories.

Even though I started out easy in the third installment of the SkiErg session, heart rate continued to be irregular and too high. So I increased the pace a bit to see if perhaps going a bit faster would nudge the heart into normal behavior. But it remained irregular and too high for the effort from start to finish of the third piece of the total time on the SkiErg.

Determined to do a total daily workout of 250 Calories on the SkiErg and 10,000 meters on the rowing machine, I kept my workout clothes on and took a long break before going to the rowing machine.

During that long break I had a substantial breakfast and about 12 ounces of home-brewed Starbucks coffee. By the time I was about half way through the coffee, more than four hours had passed since I’d taken the last portion of aspirin. So I took some more aspirin with a bowl of cereal and followed it with the remainder of the coffee.

The rowing session would be the 4th workout session of the day. When the 10,000 meter rowing session started, heart rate was still irregular and too high. Heart rate got as high as 192 BPM. There are two screenshots, below, which illustrate that heart rate reached 192 during the rowing session. There were two separate heart rate monitors worn during the session. One was on the chest and the other on the wrist. Each of them recorded high heart rate before heart rate behavior was ameliorated, but the Apple Watch shows that heart rate went even higher than 192 and reached as high as 202 BPM. I wouldn’t have known it, without the chest strap or the Apple Watch on the wrist. It just felt a bit fluttery, with no other symptoms.

I wasn’t rowing especially easy, but wasn’t rowing hard either. It was probably RPE Level 1 or Level 2 at the very most. Breathing easy, but rowing at a sufficient level to have a nice little bit of sweat.

After 4,001 meters of rowing, which took about 18 minutes and 24 seconds, heart rate suddenly became normal and dropped down into a normal, totally appropriate range for the effort level. It remained regular and at a normal rate for the remaining 5,999 meters of the rowing session.

Happy endings are nice. 🙂

Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Concept 2 logbook chart for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

The point highlighted on the Concept 2 chart shows where heart rate reached 192 according to the signal from the Polar chest mounted heart strap.

Screen shot of the rowing session heart rate graph from the 2nd heart rate detector, a wrist-mounted smart watch.

Happy rowing to you!