Your Safety is our Priority! Masks May Be Required at Millennium Offices. Don’t skip a beat when it comes to heart health. If you feel a funny flutter it could be a condition called atrial fibrillation, or AFib.
“If you feel palpitations, or you feel fast beats, or if you check your heart rate and it’s a hundred beats a minute, that’s not normal,” warns Millennium Physician Group Interventional Cardiologist Terence Connelly, MD. “And particularly if it’s not regular. If it’s irregular, you really need to get in to see your doctor because if you let that go, you could easily have a stroke.”
An AFib attack or episode usually isn’t harmful by itself. The real danger lies in how much it increases your risk for a stroke.
“You can develop a blood clot in the top part of the heart because they’re not communicating,” explains Dr. Connelly. “And that blood clot, if it goes to the bottom of the heart, it gets pumped to the brain, could lead to a stroke.”
In fact, the American Heart Association reports AFib is present in about one out of five strokes, and the likelihood of Afib increases with age. Avoiding potentially serious consequences begins with reducing your risks, including managing hypertension and high cholesterol and eating a heart-healthy diet.
“Most important thing with atrial fibrillation is to one, recognize that you have it and two, get treatment for it.”