Atrial fibrillation is a dysfunction of the heart rhythm which can have serious consequences, including the occurrence of a stroke. As part of the 2023 week of action dedicated to this disease, the testimony of a patient who had to take care of her lifestyle.
-1702914308.jpg "Atrial fibrillation: “You have to do everything you can to help your body”")
- Atrial fibrillation affects more than a million patients in France.
- This dysfunction of the heart rhythm which generates a risk of clot formation in the atrium can lead to the occurrence of a stroke.
- Treatments are based on anticoagulants, antiarrhythmics or “ablation” of AF which consists of deactivating the heart cells responsible for the disease.
“I wouldn’t have had all these problems if I had taken better care of myself…”. Having had to go through the ordeals linked to her atrial fibrillation inspires many regrets in Marie-Ange Agasali, even if this fifty-year-old says that today she found her “Cruising speed”.
“As time went by, I was getting worse and worse.”
This very active woman’s heart problems appeared in 1999 when, at the age of 33, she was diagnosed with congenital Barlow’s disease, a degeneration of the mitral valve. “I work in business tourism and events, a demanding and stressful job, and from that moment I had to be treated with beta-blockers”, she says. A treatment that works for several years”but as time went by, I was getting worse and worse“.
In 2018, during a cardiology consultation at Pitié-Salpêtrière, he was finally diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. The doctors prescribed anticoagulants and told her that she would probably have to undergo electric shocks, one of the methods used in the treatment of AF.
Too high a BMI worsens heart problems
“It worked twice, but a week later my arrhythmia came back.” The consequence, according to his doctors, of a BMI that is too high. “In fact, I suffered from morbid obesity and obviously that didn’t help anything cardiologically”explains Marie-Ange.
As part of treatment integrating this data and provided by a cardiologist and a rhythmologist, she is prescribed shock treatment: anticoagulants, beta-blockers and diuretics. “But despite all that, nothing worked.” Doctors’ verdict: 20 kilos to lose and the proposal to equip him with a pacemaker before moving on to a so-called hybrid ablation of his atrial fibrillation. An intervention which combines an invasive surgical procedure and a catheter procedure to isolate the areas of the heart muscle responsible for AF and which requires a two-week hospitalization and several months of rehabilitation.
The only solution to avoid AF ablation: lose weight
“It seemed difficult to reconcile such heavy treatment with my professional activity and in addition the role of caregiver that I had to play for my very elderly mother”, remembers Marie-Ange Agasali. There remained only one solution to avoid resorting to this intervention: lose weight. “Opinions differed between the doctors who followed me on the benefit-risk balance of hybrid ablation, and ultimately, I decided to give it up”.
40 kilos lost in one year
With the help of a nutritionist, she changed her lifestyle: eating healthier, avoiding all foods that could clog her arteries, sleeping well, that’s what Marie-Ange imposed on herself on a daily basis. And it works! She lost 40 kilos in a single year. “Today, I am doing well, and this reassures me in the choice I made not to have surgery”, she assures. By emphasizing the essential lesson learned from his health problems: “You have to do everything you can to help your body, having a healthy lifestyle is extremely important!”.
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