I have developed symptoms of heart failure. How can I find out whats going on?

[ChookityPop]

I have progressively gotten symptoms that mimic heart failure. This started maybe in march and has progressed to where I have twice been to ER which I never should have because they completely ignore it, waste of time and money.

I get this painful pressure feeling in my left chest area when I begin walking around though I can also get it while reclined in my bed etc as Im not able to sit anymore. Painful pressure followed by shortness of breath and fatigue and if I push it much my heart feels very weak afterwards and I will suffer from severe fatigue. These new symptoms has robbed me of more functionality which freaks me out. I have to get this "heart" stuff away. Any ideas? Or anyone else have similar symptoms?

I will mention that I have significantly elevated LDL, APOB and APOB/APOA1 ratio. I am eating a keto/carnivore diet and Im a lean mass hyper responder. In the setting of endothelial dysfunction elevated lipids are way worse it seems.

I have been offered the following by the cardiologist:

-Echo cor: us of heart chambers, function, size, heart valves, the main artery out of the heart.
-UL carotid. Calcifications, anomalies on the main artery.
-CAC score / CT
-AKG/Vo2 max: Stress test to look at ECG and blood pressure during work with increasing heart rate, look at blood pressure and pulse response during work, possible symptoms during work and assess work capacity (THIS IS NOT AN OPTION FOR ME).

Should I do any of these?

Is PET scan the gold standard to rule out endothelial damage/dysfunction?
They identified unhealthy endothelial cells that line the side of the heart and blood vessels in LC patients through PET scans.

"The majority of long COVID patients in the study reported symptoms doctors suspect could be cardiovascular-related. Through PET scans, they found these patients were twice as likely to have unhealthy endothelial cells that line the side of the heart and blood vessels.

This may potentially explain why some patients are having chest pain and shortness of breath because when they need more blood, their heart is not getting that extra blood," Al-Mallah said.

Patients with unhealthy endothelial cells are at higher risk of heart failure, of needing unplanned catheterization and bypass surgery, and of death."
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/...kB5DjTXKVOW01hfvE3yyT6427q0AcQvdkRQN2ufqdkGEo

 

[Pyrrhus]

I get this painful pressure feeling in my left chest area when I begin walking around though I can also get it while reclined in my bed

I don't know if it is relevant to your case, but many ME patients get recurring episodic pericarditis, where the lining of the heart becomes temporarily inflamed for unknown reasons.

 

[Zebra]

Should I do any of these?

YES.

If you are concerned about your heart health, you should follow through on these important tests that the cardiologist has ordered for you.


P.S. I also want to piggy back on @Pyrrhus comment. In 2020 I had symptoms similar to yours, and I had two of the tests you mentioned above (plus a stress test & VO2 max test). All of the cardiac imaging tests revealed a persistent pericardial effusion. It wasn't large enough to drain, so I have no answers as to what caused it.

 

[GreenEdge]

Should I do any of these?

NO, because it will only leave you with more fatigue.

There may be a simple fix. Heart palpitations/arrhythmia can occur on keto/carnivore diet due to an electrolyte imbalance, usually low in potassium, magnesium or sodium. Have you been adding salt to your meals? You should, at least initially according to taste and over time you will naturally use less and less.

Here are two YouTube videos on the topic (there may be more):
Dealing With Heart Palpitations On The Carnivore Diet
Carnivore Diet Heart palpitations/arrhythmia

The cause of electrolyte loss on ketogenic diets:

The keto flu
When you restrict carbohydrates, your body begins to process electrolytes differently. This is because when insulin levels are low, the kidneys excrete more sodium.

Since there is a delicate balance between sodium and other electrolytes in the body, the loss of sodium may disrupt levels of other electrolytes as well.

In some cases, this leads to symptoms that are often described as the “keto flu.” These symptoms are usually temporary and resolve as your body adapts to low carb.

Fortunately, replenishing sodium, magnesium, and potassium may help prevent or greatly diminish symptoms of keto flu and other side effects.

Symptoms of electrolyte deficiency and what to do about them

Carbohydrate burning causes inflammation and water holding. Whenever you switch into 'ketosis' (fat burning) you loose a lot of water and electrolytes (that need to be replenished). So best to stay ketogenic and not cheat - so you're not cycling in and out of ketosis. As you body adapts to being ketogenic it will learn to hang onto electrolytes, but I think this takes years.

 

[Crux]

When first starting keto, I got the miserable ' keto rash'. I read that it was possibly from a histamine reaction.
After reading about histamine metabolism, I suspected low copper. Not only is copper good for histamine excess, but it regulates iron, keeping it from accumulating in organs like liver , brain, and heart.

I used to not be able to lie on my left side. Now I can from taking copper glycinate, good for heart.

I tried carnivore for a year , improved for 6 months, then regressed. I had enough sodium, potassium, and mag.,
but not enough calcium, and other nutrients.

The calcium deficiency symptoms became extreme. I'd had many of them for years, unaware why.

Calcium can also help with elevated cholesterol. It lowered mine from 520 to 268 in about 6 months.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718302/

" Intracellular calcium dynamics in cardiac cells have been recognized as an important contributor in life- threatening ventricular arrhythmia (ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation)2,3 as well as increasingly prevalent atrial arrhythmias (atrial fibrillation [AF] and flutter).4,5 "

 

[GreenEdge]

The only source of calcium for us humans is eggs, dairy (includes breast milk) and bone.
Let me explain:

1. In mammalian animals calcium is passed down from mother to child.
2. It is physically impossible for us humans to eat enough green leafy veg to meet our calcium requirement.
3. Therefore, once weened our calcium must come from eggs, dairy or bone.
4. The only sources of calcium for strict carnivores (humans included) is bone or dairy? I'll take dairy.

Please don't start a debate on whether humans are carnivores. You can follow your beliefs and I'll follow mine.

Note: The cows get their calcium from eating grass all day long; and they eat a lot of grass. Their calcium is found concentrated in their bones and in their milk - so calf can grow quickly to half adult size. For us to get our calcium most of us will consume dairy products made from the milk of ruminants. Others will need to consume eggs or bone broth.

Therefore:

• The Lion diet* (ruminant meat, salt & water) must include bone broth.
• The Carnivore diet must include eggs or dairy or bone both.
• The Vegan dieter must supplement.
• All other diets must include eggs or dairy or bone both.
• Those with allergies should be eating ancestrally appropriately to not do themselves harm.

* made famous by Mikala Peterson.

In all natural foods that contain fat; the fat is always found in all 3 forms (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated).

An egg has all 3 forms in equal parts and contains all the nutrients required to make a bird. Therefore all 3 forms are healthy for a bird. Mammalian milk contains more saturated fat than the other two. Natural dairy products are the only foods containing more saturated fat than monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. Don't worry about the fats (as nature intended) in dairy or the cholesterol in eggs, cholesterol is so vital to human survival that we will make our own if we don't consume enough. And don't worry about salt either, it barely effects blood pressure at all; and too little is more deadly than too much - any excess is excreted in urea. Dr David Unwin asks: "Are we been blaming the salt for what the sugar did?" - caused inflammation that restricts our blood vessels and arteries, thereby raising our blood pressure.

The fat in human breast milk is 53% saturated. Therefore saturated fat is good for you!!!
Let me explain:

1. Evolution would not have selected for feeding a waste product to a newborn.
2. Therefore, it was selectively chosen as being best for baby.

Perfectly designed by natural selection:- The constituents in breast milk changes from start of feed to end of feed; and according to stage of development. More fat content is delivered towards the end. So baby is delivered other nutrients first as the priority and then filled with fat until content.

 

[GreenEdge]

Hi @ChookityPop, did you get any tests done? or were you able to resolve it yourself?

I will mention that I have significantly elevated LDL, APOB and APOB/APOA1 ratio.

So you have a healthy LDL particle size. That's excellent.

I am eating a keto/carnivore diet and Im a lean mass hyper responder.

I wonder if you're eating enough fat with your meat? I myself find it difficult to get enough. All the meat today (where I live) has the fat trimmed off. I was becoming too lean. I spoke to my local butcher and he gives away fat trimmings to anyone who wants it. He said to phone early morning so they can put some aside for me (before it ends up in the bin mixed with everything else). They also sell meat trimmings as pet food for $9/kg.

In the setting of endothelial dysfunction elevated lipids are way worse it seems.

But your blood glucose is kept low and stable, so some of your endothelial cells will actually have cilia that protect against atherosclerosis. Unlike carbohydrate addicts that have endothelial cells with no cilia, because the cilia get destroyed by elevated blood glucose and take ~24hrs to regenerate.

Since I'm not getting any exercise, I thought it's probably a good idea to make sure my blood vessels dilate regularly, I take 100mg of flush type Niacin with a glass of water on an empty stomach. It hurts a little (like having sunburn) and clears in about 30-60 minutes. I wrote about it in my introduce yourself post.

Im not able to sit anymore.

I had this myself years ago. The Transverse Abdominal (TA) muscle is usually the cause. Here is a video to teach you how to activate it in bed. Aim for light activation, just enough for your fingers to begin to lift:-

• Start with just 2 sessions (lasting a few minutes) per day (morning and evening) increasing to 3 per day (months later) - core stability muscles recover quickly, but can become fatigued and take days instead of hours to recover. So start slow!!!
• Hold each contraction for only 5 seconds, increasing to 10 second holds.
• Also practice briefly before getting up out of bed - to wake up that TA muscle and prepare it for supporting your lower back when you get up.

 

[GreenEdge]

Hi @ChookityPop, could this be the cause of your heart trouble?

For the last 2 months I've been having heart palpitations and I think I found the cause.

Our bodies have in effect 3 brains:

1. Neurons inside the skull that form the main brain.
2. Neurons around the heart that activate in response to emotions.
3. Neurons around the intestines for taking care of digestion for us.

This video show me how to let go of my bottled up emotions.

 

[Mary]

@ChookityPop - thiamine deficiency can cause heart failure: Thiamine and Heart Failure

Thiamine boosted my energy a lot, although it also caused my phosphorous to tank due to refeeding syndrome and I had to start supplementing with phosphorous as well as thiamine, but was happy to do so because the thiamine helped my energy so much. This article says that keto dieters tend to be low in thiamine.

I started with 100 mg of thiamine and within 1 or 2 days at the most had a very nice increase in energy, followed a day or 2 later by severe fatigue (phosphorous tanking). Several glasses of kefir (high in phosphorous) took care of that fatigue, so I knew what I was dealing with and started the phosphorous supplement.

 

[ChookityPop]

@ChookityPop - thiamine deficiency can cause heart failure: Thiamine and Heart Failure

Thiamine boosted my energy a lot, although it also caused my phosphorous to tank due to refeeding syndrome and I had to start supplementing with phosphorous as well as thiamine, but was happy to do so because the thiamine helped my energy so much. This article says that keto dieters tend to be low in thiamine.

I started with 100 mg of thiamine and within 1 or 2 days at the most had a very nice increase in energy, followed a day or 2 later by severe fatigue (phosphorous tanking). Several glasses of kefir (high in phosphorous) took care of that fatigue, so I knew what I was dealing with and started the phosphorous supplement.

Thanks for sharing! I tried thiamin before christmas among a million other things and I also felt the most robust Ive felt since I relapsed in 2019. I flared my SFN and large nerve inflammation severely after eating lots of chocolate the 25th december.

My heart failure seems to have lessened also before christmas. It happened at the same time (I think) that I started using a muscle relaxants combo. I have huge problems with muscle tensing up SEVERLY. Happens in all of my body so it might be related to that also and maybe the muscle relaxant and cannabis helped the heart failure like symptoms.

 

[cheeseater]

Curious why you are on a keto diet? I have seen people with a confirmed diagnosis of "heart failure" live fairly normal lives for 30+ years well into their 90's. They take the drugs their cardiologist prescribes.

People with paroxysmal arrhythmias will very rarely still have the arrhythmias when they go to ER. Only way to catch it is with one of those 24 hour a day 5 day (heart monitor) devices hooked up.