coffee DOES NOT cause arrhythmia?

[itdood]

A lot of us have been told by our doctors to cut out caffeine when we walk in the door with tach or ectopics.  A lot of us report here that it doesn't help.   Well, a study published this week shows an interesting trend in the data.  People who drank more coffee had less arrhythmia related hospitalization.  The control, those who drank decaffeinated coffee, did not show this correlation.  This suggest that the mechanism of protection is the caffeine.  A leading theory is that caffeine competes for adenosine receptors.  This means caffeine is an adenosine antagonist.   Adenosine's job is to make us feel tired and primarily works in the brain.  This is why caffeine can keep you up.  

Adenosine also affects the conduction system of the heart through receptors on your cardiomyocytes.   This affects depolarization times and heart rate variability.  Heart rate variability has big implication fo arrhythmias.  HRV isn't the timing between QRS complexes or variability in your pulse rate.  HRV relates to specific timing in the QRS complex itself.  This means timing in the ST segment, or QT segment, etc.    Changes in these timings can mean a lot, for example, prolonged QT interval can mean there's muscle damage.  QT interval is the time from when the ventricles receive the AV trigger to beat to when they recover.

I think the study backs up a lot of the anecdotal evidence we see.

Here's the gotcha though.  This is where epidemiologist need to be careful with studies.  They show something called a "correlation" between caffeine intake and hospitalizations.  This does not mean there's "causation".  These are very different things and causation is difficult to prove.  As an example, perhaps the reasons caffeine drinkers show less arrhythmia is because they are a population of people who aren't prone to it and thus drink more coffee.  People who are prone to palps will cut the habit.  

My advice, I still think caffeine does play a role in arrhythmia.  This was a population study.  Population studies are good at showing correlation but really bad at proving causation.  A better study would be to actually observe the effects of caffeine on patients with arrhythmia to see what happens on EKGs.

If you're interested in the study please google the search terms "CCDEP coffee arrhythmia".  

[Mom2four85]

grrr I hit post without the rest LOL - my brain needs to work right, but that's not happening anytime soon

my point was - even with an enormous amount of pvc's - 54,000+ pvc's no doctor told me to cut out coffee/caffeine and I found that strange, even after they knew what was wrong with me they still didn't tell me to cut it out knowing I drink coffee daily, caffeine isn't a trigger for me :)

hopefully they'll do some studies to get some concrete evidence on this since there are so many people who suffer pvc's - 1 or 100,000 pvc's are no fun to deal with, I've had my fair share and can empathize with anyone who has to deal with them, trivial or not :P

[Mom2four85]

bobad; my pvc's were life threatening

I'm one of those who have these "dangerous" malignant pvc's - I've suffered VT and V-Fib episodes for awhile now and finally got a dx after surgery - I have long polymorphic runs of sustained & non sustained VT - no known cause after many tests & surgeries :)  

I had 54,000+ pvc's daily for awhile and developed non ischemic cardiomyopathy, also dx with trace MVP, tricuspid regurgitation and some other things - NCS & OI along with ANS failure and peripheral neuropathy

yeah pvc's CAN wreck havoc on your life :)

[bobad]

Your doctors don't mention triggers because there's a huge gap between how doctors and patients perceive palpitations. Many patients find them torturing and debilitating, but most doctors think they're non life threatening and even trivial. If they're trivial, why are you given dangerous medicine, and how can they wreck your life?

[Barbarella]

Dr. Rosenthal, a Cardiologist in NYC talked about this on FOX last Sunday.  I''m so glad he did because whenever I have PVC's and drink coffee the PVC's got a lot better or even went away for awhile anyway.  I could never understand that and my husband used to say that the "coffee calmed me down because I like coffee so much and that is why the PVC's got so much better".  However, I just could not believe this and I used to tell him  "but its caffeine how can that calm me down?"  After listening to Dr. Rosenthal I now can make the connection.

[Mom2four85]

great article, I'm going to google what you put in Itdood if my brain can take it all in today :)

I've not had 1 doctor tell me to cut out caffeine or foods, nor have any of them (8 or 10 so far) asked if I had any triggers, I heard about triggers on this forum first and tried to find my culprit, but other than stress or adrenaline nothing else affected my crazy amount of pvc's.

The thing I have noticed with studies is like someone else mentioned, they tend to "sway" a certain way depenedent upon who sponsors them - so if something bothers your or is a trigger, no matter what research says, I wouldn't do it :P

[cindy707]

Exactly what i have been saying all along..hopefully they will do the 7 year cllinical study of the effects.....but who knows where we will all be when those results are in....people need to remember also that decaf coffee also has caffeine in it altho they say its only approx. 3%......good post you guys