What is meant by paroxysmal atrial fibrillation? Atrial fibrillation occurs in paroxysmal or continuous episodes. Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation is an intermittent irregular “tremor” of the atrial muscles that comes on and then returns on its own. Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation is a relatively common type of arrhythmia, usually encountered more often in men than women, more often in older people than in younger ones, and is prone to attacks when people are fatigued, have mood swings, are too full and eat fatty foods, or are accompanied by certain other cardiovascular system diseases. Who is it common in? Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation can be seen in normal people and can occur during emotional stress, after surgery, during exercise, or with heavy alcohol consumption. Atrial fibrillation can also occur in patients with cardiac and pulmonary disease in the setting of acute hypoxia, hypercapnia, metabolic or hemodynamic disturbances. Atrial fibrillation often occurs in patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease, commonly rheumatic heart disease, coronary heart disease, hypertensive heart disease, hyperthyroidism, constrictive pericarditis, cardiomyopathy, infective endocarditis, and chronic pulmonary heart disease. Atrial fibrillation occurs in young and middle-aged people without heart disease and is called isolated atrial fibrillation. What are the main risks? Atrial fibrillation means loss of effective contraction and diastole, deterioration or loss of atrial pumping function, combined with decremental conduction of the atrioventricular node to rapid atrial excitation, causing an extremely irregular response of the ventricles. Thus, ventricular rhythm (rate) disturbances, impaired cardiac function, and atrial appendage thrombosis are the main pathophysiological features of patients with atrial fibrillation. The risk of complicating embolism in the body circulation is high, and the chance of stroke is statistically 5-7 times higher than in those without AF. The incidence of AF in the population? In 2004, an epidemiological survey of 29,079 adults aged 30-85 years in the natural population of 14 Chinese provinces and municipalities directly under the central government suggested that the overall prevalence of atrial fibrillation in China was 0.77%, only 0.5% in people aged 50-59 years, and up to 7.5% in people aged ≥80 years. Treatment status Due to the advantages of Western medicine in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, almost most patients rarely think that paroxysmal atrial fibrillation can be treated with Chinese herbal medicine at the onset of the disease, missing many of the best times for treatment. Advantages of TCM treatment After many years of clinical visits to outpatient clinics, we have found that TCM has its unique advantages in the treatment of arrhythmias. Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation is one of the more serious ones. The clinical manifestations of patients’ episodes vary. Some of them have a long period of time, such as once a year, or once every few months, or once every few weeks, and some of them have frequent episodes, such as every day, and the number of episodes varies. The episodes are characterized by palpitations, panic attacks, and chest tightness, even after taking anti-arrhythmic drugs. This seriously affects the patient’s quality of life. Generally speaking, there are two major groups of patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, one of which is not associated with cardiovascular disease. These patients often have the following triggering factors: 1. chronic poor sleep, 2. emotional agitation, 3. frequent or prefer to drink alcohol and eat more meat, 4. history of cholecystitis or gallstones, 4. long-term chronic diarrhea. The second group of patients is accompanied by cardiovascular disorders. Such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, myocarditis, pulmonary heart disease, etc. Chinese medicine believes that all episodes of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation are related to the following factors: 1. Qi deficiency pulse qi cannot be articulated. These patients have overexertion, easily feel fatigued, tired and have an attack; this is the most common in clinical practice, and is also the Chinese medicine treatment will be very obvious. There will be many reasons for qi depletion, overwork from work and life, inappropriate treatment, etc. A patient who had surgery in 2013 started to feel only fatigue, and six months later began to have atrial fibrillation attacks, more attacks after fatigue, atrial fibrillation hair stopping, repeated chest tightness and shortness of breath, very poor sleep, and emotional instability. The patient came to the clinic with the mood of Chinese medicine treatment. After six months of treatment with Chinese herbal medicine, atrial fibrillation stopped, and the person had strength. The electrocardiogram returned to normal. Now the heart rhythm is also neat, sleep well, and spirit is also good. 2.Qi stagnation. Some patients have been in a bad mood for a long time, and Chinese medicine says that qi stagnation leads to blood stasis, and palpitations can occur when the blood is not smooth. In the first half of a few years, I treated a patient who had several episodes of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in a month, and he was sent to the emergency room every time he had an attack. Now it has been almost a year and the patient’s heart rhythm is always normal, and even the chest pain that used to occur frequently no longer occurs. Although this patient has cardiovascular disease, but afterwards found that each attack unique emotional stimulus factors. 3.Phlegm and stasis mutual obstruction. The development of cardiovascular disease to the stage of mutual obstruction of phlegm and stagnation is accumulated over decades. Of course, in recent years, we have seen extreme 27 and 28 year olds with myocardial infarction. Therefore, if you have paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, you can first take Chinese medicine to see. In my experience, as long as it is not intermittent atrial fibrillation that has been dragging on for years, herbal medicine can be taken for a period of time to get better. The patient who has done radiofrequency ablation should also use Chinese medicine for a period of time.