As a former college athlete, Jim Kaveney never expected to experience cardiovascular problems in his 30s. Here’s what he wants everyone to know about heart health.
Each year, more than 454,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized with atrial fibrillation, the most common type of treated heart arrhythmia. It also contributes to 158,000 deaths each year. Perhaps most startling is that an estimated one in three people don’t know they have atrial fibrillation (also known as AFib).
For many years, Jim Kaveney was one of those people, yet it’s a condition he was diagnosed with when he was 38. A former college athlete, Kaveney didn’t have the common risk factors for AFib, such as obesity or Type 2 diabetes. But there were early signs that something was wrong as well as a risk factor he missed. Now, he’s on a mission to share his journey so others can learn from it.
The First Sign Something Was Wrong
Kaveney says he has always lived an active lifestyle and in college, he was on his university’s crew team. As part of their training, Kaveney and his crewmates had to wear heart rate monitors and maintain a consistent heart rate between 130 and 135 beats per minute while training. “Sometimes, my heart rate would jump up to 190 and then it would go back down to 130 without me changing anything,” Kaveney says. This was the first sign that something significant was off with his heart.
At the time, Kaveney wasn’t too concerned. After all, he was a young, healthy college student. He didn’t think about his heart health until years later when he was in his late 30s. “Sometimes, I’d have to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and I would get dizzy. I had to cling to the walls trying not to fall,” he says. The symptoms would come and go and Kaveney put off seeing a doctor. One morning, he got out of bed and fainted, falling right to the ground. His wife told him he needed to go to the doctor.
Kaveney made an appointment with his primary care doctor, who did an EKG. He also gave Kaveney a heart rate monitor to wear at home for the next several days. It was through these tests that his doctor was able to see that Kaveney had atrial fibrillation.
Related: What’s More Important for Heart Health: Lowering Dietary Cholesterol or Saturated Fat?
Risk Factors for Atrial Fibrillation That Are Often Overlooked
How did Kaveney—who was healthier than the average person—get AFib? While exercising in general is good for the heart, after being diagnosed, Kaveney learned that too much exercise was a risk factor. According to scientific research, vigorously exercising between five and seven days a week in people younger than 50 increases the risk of AFib.