If you have heart disease, you will have paid attention to your symptoms and you will be in treatment for it. But don’t bet on having those tell tale symptoms until it is too late. Heart failure doesn’t mean your heart is failing. It’s the pumping power that is failing: lacking the power to pump blood at an adequate rate for supply of oxygen and nutrients, your precious juice moves slower through the body on the way to the heart. In response to that slowness pressure builds up in the heart. What other can your heart do in response than stretch like an overblown balloon? Your heart chambers bag out as we can readily imagine, or become stiff and thick. A vicious cycle.
Your hear muscle adapts to cope with the changes, but not for the better. You know what happens at your grandkid’s birthday party: the little terror keeps on blowing and blowing that cool balloon, and eventually pop it goes. Bagged out. Unable to pump nicely, the way we expect, your kidneys try to compensate by storing water in your limbs, lungs and other organs. I mean blood is thicker than water, we say…Eventually you’ll notice this fluid retention in your legs, abdomen and bum, but you might not have caught on yet! You just thought you put on some weight! Naturally, you say, your body is slowing down a bit.
In the meantime, unbeknownst to you, your body is filling up with the fluid, and like the proverbial drop in the bucket, it is just a matter of time before that last drop will come and get you. Your lungs are congested and you’re drowning. You’re wheezing some time
Before that event, and if you’re the type who’d rather not know, let your doctor tell you it’s…bronchitis! After all, you hardly ever go to the doctor, you have no intimate relationship with them, and you’re both wildly guessing at this point. Your half-full glass philosophy will keep you on an even keel, and I am sure although doctors are known for imagining they have all the diseases they encounter while training, it really does helps not to think of the worst first. So it is bronchitis, strange but well, they are the doctors after all.
Before I continue on this road tomorrow, I’ll stress the fact that it IS important to keep fit, to exercise as long as one can – and in addition – it IS important to keep one’s blood pressure as low as possible. To recap, the heart is under greater pressure, therefore the blood can’t deliver what the body needs, your kidneys respond by withholding water that your body stores in extremities, organs, and your lungs. In response to this challenge, try to lower your blood pressure at all cost and lower it naturally. Of course with this disease you’ll be taking many pills to contain the situation for as long as possible, but it never hurts to go just that extra mile.
…to be continued
