Do's and Dont's

Do’s

-       Keep and follow your medical appointments. Bring your medication along as it helps ensure the doctor on what medication you are taking.

-       Follow the doctor’s instructions when consuming any medication. Be it, over-the-counter medicine, cold or flu tablets, and nutritional supplements.

-       Mention all your side effects from any medication consumed. For example, the feeling of depression and palpitations.

-       If you are having an arrhythmia symptoms, a new symptom or the symptom worsen, inform the doctor.

-       Take care of yourself. Lie down if you are feeling light-headed.

-       Consume a healthy diet. Most arrhythmia cases are caused by underlying heart diseases. Have a diet that consist plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Commit to physical activities regularly.

-       Consume healthy fats. As an example, olive oil, seeds and nuts. Omega-3s are found in foods like tuna, sardine, salmon and flaxseeds.

Don’ts

-       No smoking.

-       Caffeine, alcohol and substances that can trigger arrhythmia. Caffeine is closely associated with arrhythmia-particularly with fast heart beat

-       Eat food that are high in sodium. Salt increases blood pressure, which will then increases the chances of having arrhythmia. Limit yourself to not consume more than 1 5000 milligrams of sodium a day.

-       Keep away from animal fats.

-       Foods that are high in tyramine. Tyramine is a substance that are found in aged and fermented foods. A few examples are aged cheeses (Cheddar), cured meats (dry-type summer sausages), fermented cabbage (kimchee), certain sauces (soy sauce) and yeast extract spreads (Marmite). 

From the dos and don’ts patients can apply another health behaviour theory can be applied to enhance adherence, for instance the transtheoretical model for stop smoking or  stop consuming excessive amount of coffee or stop eating high-calorie foods. All of those are the triggers of arrhythmia, thus it needs to control and stop.  Let’s take coffee as an example; the patient will start at the pre-contemplation stage, where he/she has no intention of stopping his/her excessive intakes of coffee. Then he/she will start to feel that there is fluttering action of his/her heart and realizing that the excessive amount of coffee is the cause. This is the stage when he/she starts to contemplate and wants to stop drinking too much coffee. The next stage is preparation, he/she will prepare a coffee flavoured sweets, which contains only a small amount of caffeine, or a chewing gum to replace coffee. Then the action stage, he/she may decrease the number of cups that he/she takes every day for example, only one cup per day and to be taken only during breakfast is to be accomplished in a month time. Then improve on the progress made by drinking only five cups a week, only on weekdays. Lastly, he/she should maintain with drinking 5 cups of coffee during weekdays for every week, while trying to avoid tempting situations.