Your life. Me, I’ll take the one who has stayed on top of the legitimate research.
This may be of interest, maybe not:
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Thanks for your comments;
Of course you are right that the comments so far are not rigorous enough to inform science. This was not the point and the goal of the forum string was to test the waters.
As you have seen from your literature review is that over 3.5 hours of vigorous exercise per week (20 met-h/wk) increases your risk. But the curve over this met-h/week had quite a slow slope.
Isn’t it peculiar that this isn’t the same for women?
Don’t you think that it is more than only met-h/week? shouldn’t current age, time of life when training occurred, type of training (long and slow vs high intensity), left atrial size, family history, breaks during training post-season, PACs on Holter etc etc impact the risk of atrial fibrillation.
Part of the problem with previous research is that it has been heterogeneous in terms of training or included participants or have been randomized for a few weeks or have included too few participants. Happy to speak about the specifics of these studies further.
To really do this right we would all include our baseline demographics, age, sex, family history, training so far, medical history (hypertension, diabetes, LVH, stroke, heart failure, alcohol use, etc). We would all have standardized, core-lab adjudicated testing with an echocardiogram (including atrial strain) and ecg on a yearly basis.
Then we would train. The part of trainer road that is so good is that all of us would have only so many plans. The other difference in current training that is different than previous research is that we often use power and train as a percentage of our FTP.
It would take a few thousand people to do this well (as you have alluded to).
As I am sure you have seen from my research on pubmed that it has primarily been in atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias.
I do appreciate your interest on this subject.
Thanks for your comments
Matt
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Great, so you know what the questions are - do you really think that an anonymous internet survey will help answer them??
thanks again;
this wouldn’t be a survey but a database where the data would be collected from site PIs at each participant’s local university/hospital.
Of course the database would have to be anonymous in order to get through ethics as is all research.
Does this answer your question?
Matt
Im a 52 year old physician who developed exercise induced aflutter few years back that progressed requiring ablation. Did well for few years now have exercise induced afib. Talking about another ablation as I find the drugs not helpful and with too many side effects. I generally ride 10hr per week and have found reducing caffeine and alcohol to make little difference. Take a statin and omega 3 supplements, but recently read that omega 3s may encourage arrhythmias… Now cut back to single tablet rather than 3 per day. Seems like most things, good and bad… Moderation is your friend… Id be happy to participate!
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Whether that is classed at vigorous would really depend on your VO2 Max. I would have thought.
If we take the 1 MET equivalent as 3.5mL/min/kg. and someone with a VO2 max of 49mL//min/kg. Then when working at their max they are burning at a rate of 14 METs, in your example , 3.5 hours working at an effort level of 6 METs is working at 43% of their max. I wouldn’t call that vigorous.
Thanks @kduwe
This is a tough thing to study. In the end I realized that there were too many variables making too heterogeneous a sample (particularly now with adaptive training); Hopefully the team considers using their AI engine for these sorts of questions in the future. Good luck with the Rx/next ablation
Agree @GoLongThenGoHome, depressing isn’t it. I look at my bike and I increase my met-h 
This was a direct quote from the literature. I think many of us are over this
This has been an interesting read for me. I haven’t had any personal issues with Afib and have only recently become aware of it as a potential issue. But my wife has been complaining about unusual heart fluttering over the last few weeks and is due to go in for a full check up. She took up physical training a couple of years ago and pushes herself pretty hard with very little recovery. So I’m now wondering if this is the cause of her symptoms. It seems like too much of a coincidence, but of course it could be something completely unrelated.
At the end of the day, I think the benefits of exercise far outweigh the risks. But it does make me think twice about how far I should push myself when training. I’m not getting paid to ride, so do I really need to push myself 100% for marginal gains? It’s not an easy question to answer because a lot of my motivation to exercise is to push myself to the limit and improve my PRs. If I took that away, would I just lose interest and give up? Food for thought…