As I said I would I have rested this week. After Monday's dissapointing run, I thought it a good idea to take the week off. So I'll go for a slow run tomorrow and then see how I do on longer run on Saturday. Probably 13/14km. I'll have to go back to running intervals, because as Monday's graph shows I'm back to have very little variability in my heartrate, which is very disappointing.
All this has made me think long and hard about whats been going on in my heart. When it comes to hearts I only have my common sense and a little bit of reading up to count on, but as I lay in bed this morning in that state inbetween waking and sleeping I started thinking of electrical circuits. More than half of my undergrad studies were devoted to electical and electronics engineering, so it is something I know quite well. I also know that a heart is basically an electromechanical system. There are neural pathways which transport electrical signals around the heart causing muscle tissue to contract or relax in time with an electrical pulse generated by the sinus node in the right atrium (top right chamber of the heart).
The atria and the ventricals are electrically isolated from one another except for the AV (atrioventricular) node, which in a normal heart delays the pulse long enough for the atria to complete there contraction, and then conducts the electrical pulse to the ventricals. It's a fantastically clever system and works very well when things are going right.
In my heart there are some stray electrical signals which I believe cause my atria to beat faster than they should. My doctor attempted to burn some of the pathways a few years ago when I had an angiogram. I think they call it a cardioablation. He described them as little self sustaining circuits which send signals round and round in my atria. They get blocked at the AV node, and more so because of the medication I'm on.
So with all this in mind I was semidreaming this morning and thinking about all the electromagnetic radiation we are exposed to on a daily basis. I know that EM radiation induces voltage in wires that are near it... infact if you go put a coil of wire under a high power transmission line, you can steal power from the electrical company without touching the wires. I started thinking about what all this EM must be doing to a heart that already has a bias towards these stray electrical signals. A heart that is perhaps in every other way getting stronger and healthier because of frequent exercise and relatively healthy living. Well the conclusion I come to is that IF those stray electrical signals were perhaps tending towards fading away then all the EM radiation would just re-excite those signals everytime I used a cellphone or walked close to cellphone tower or under a high power line.
Ok I agree, it sounds a bit looney, but bare with me. The strange thing is that I have no doubt that this change over from arythmia to sinus rythm occured while I was on holiday over December. During that time I didn't do a lot of exercise, I didn't eat particularly healthy and I certainly didn't abstain from alcohol. So why did it happen then? Perhaps it was just ready and the rest I had allowed it to change pace. That may be, but I have a better idea! I spent 4 nights on the Orange river, I had no cellphone with me, no-one did. There are very few cellphone towers in range of that stretch of the river and I saw no lights so there was very little electrical power around.
So maybe my heart was ready because of the work I've done and being away allowed these stray signals to fade away without being re-excited. Sound nuts? I'll never know for certain, this is all supposition. I just know it was fantastic for a few weeks to have a heart that was beating in correct rythm. Maybe a few weeks as far away from civilisation every year wouldn't be a bad plan!
What I do plan to do though is to speak to my cardiologist next week (he said I should phone on Mon/Tues/Wed) and ask if he thinks its worth cardioverting me again considering that I was in sinus rythm last week. Anyway I'll keep posting, maybe it happens again.
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