You got rhythm, all God's children got rhythm.
Certainly the most conspicuous of our body's multiple separate rhythms is our pulse which as we all know is approximately 70 heart beats per minute. But that rate is highly dependent on your state of physical fitness. A fit person's heart beats slower because it is more efficient. A fit athlete's pulse rate may be 50 beats per minute or even slower. As a general rule, the slower the better.
The electrical activity of the heart is controlled by nerve cables that run from the top to the bottom. The beat originates in the SA node (Sino atrial node) and extends inferiorly to the AV node (the Atrio ventricular node) at the top of the ventricles which are the main pumping chambers.
As a general rule the electrical impulse is absolutely regular at approximately once per second, like a metronome. But commonly there is a problem as the heart beats become disorderly. The types of arrhythmia are many, and most are sporadic and benign, while some are more worrisome. Whenever the ventricles become irregular death beckons. But it is more common that the atria start beating chaotically, fibrillating. When this happens the ventricles lose their cue from the atria and assume their own intrinsic rhythm which is syncopated, and thereby less efficient. This circumstance is called atrial fibrillation, and is very common. When this occurs the ventricles beat at about 80% of the normal efficiency, because they lack the extra push that the atria generally contribute.
This happened to me a few months ago. I developed atrial fibrillation. I conjecture that it happened because my endurance running habit resulted in thousands of gallons of extra blood coursing through my heart resulting in a structural remodeling of the atria which effectively tented the cables that control the rhythm. Therefore the coordination between the top and the bottom was lost. As a result the ventricles lacked the extra push that the atria normally provide. I became weaker and shorter of breath.
Since I resolutely plan on living to be 100 I need my heart to be synchronous with that prediction. I wanted my beat to harmonize again. So on August 11, a little over a month ago, my expert Stanford colleague, Dr. Sanjiv Narayan did his magic on my heart. Via video he inserted wire cables into both sides of my heart, found the villainous irritable focus , and ablated it by cautery. BINGO! He restored the heart messaging back to its original one-to-one pattern.
As a result I exult. I have rediscovered my normal sinus rhythm, NSR. I am much, much happier to be regular.
Who could ask for anything more?