Life post congestive heart failure diagnosis
In brief, congestive heart failure is the condition where the heart cannot pump properly to maintain the blood flow in the body. The heart’s inability to pump sufficient amount of blood flow, as it seems, is a very dangerous condition and is fatal as this is one of the most vital activities that happen in a human body for it to function.
There are many ways to prevent heart-related diseases and problems. Healthy diet, exercise, and overall healthy lifestyle can curb your chances of getting a heart disease by almost 80 per cent. Not just in America, but heart failure affects 40 million people globally.
Like every disease and illness, heart failure too has many signs and symptoms. Heart failure can be distinguished in two types”right sided failure and left sided failure. It is important to know what each side of your heart does. Left side takes oxygen-rich blood from the lungs that has been received by the lungs from the right side of the heart. Failure of the left side of the heart causes blood to get blocked and congest into the lungs and failure of right side of the heart occurs when the heart is not pumping blood to the lungs sufficiently. Right side heart failure is also called pulmonary heart disease.
Though this illness or heart conditions occur to people in their old age, there are many cases where people are diagnosed with congestive heart failure even at the age of 30 and above. The reason for this is a unhealthy diet and lifestyle.
Shortness of breath while at rest, with activity or exertion, while lying flat, or while waking up are some of the common symptoms of congestive heart failure that are related to breathing. Symptoms related to chest is chest pain.
Post diagnosis, doctors begin treatments for the patient to prolong his or her life despite the disease. Treatments also help the heart beat more efficiently and help the heart take less load by decreasing the fluids within the body.
Once diagnosed, there are a lot of healthy changes one has to make in one’s life to survive through the illness. Then the healthy lifestyle becomes more of a necessity than choice. A new diet regime is introduced along with compulsory exercising based on which class (class I, II, III, & IV) of heart failure they fall in.
