Signs and Symptoms of CHF:

A number of symptoms are associated with heart failure, but none is specific for the condition. Perhaps the best known symptom is short of breath (called dyspnea). In heart failure, this may result from excess fluid in the lungs. The breathing difficulties may occur at rest or during exercise. In some cases, congestion may be severe enough to interrupt or prevent you from sleeping.

-Fatigue or easy tiring is another common symptom. As the heart’s pumping capacity decreases, muscles and other tissues receive less oxygen and nutrition, which are carried in the blood. Without proper fuel (oxygen from the blood) provided by our engine (the heart), the body cannot perform as much work as it use to do (just like going from in shape to out of shape in time). The ending line is this will result into fatigue.

-Fluid accumulation will cause swelling in the feet, ankles, legs, and occasionally the abdomen (if the fluid building up in the body gets severe), what we medically call edema.   Through gravity the blood goes backwards and our body allows water to transfer in the skin to allow the fluid to go somewhere other than the bloodstream to decrease fluid overload to the heart by compensating. It body compensates since the blood is going backwards from the heart causing fluid back up. Excess fluid retained by the body will result into weight gain, which sometimes occurs fairly quickly (if you have CHF already you should always call your M.D. if you weight gain is 3lbs or more in a week, odds are high this is due to fluid building up).

-Persistent coughing is another common sign, especially coughing that regularly produces mucus or pink, blood-tinged sputum. Some people develop raspy breathing or wheezing.

-Heart failure usually goes through a slow development process, the symptoms may not appear until the condition has progressed over the years. This happens because the heart first compensates by making adjustments with the heart that delay or slow down but do not prevent, the eventual loss in pumping capacity. In time failure happens, just like a car in when it gets older over several years is starts showing one problem after another and is exchanged for a newer car; same principle with the heart in that you show signs and symptoms as your heart starts to slow down to failure and its either treat the problem or get a transplant of the organ (which is unlikely to happen).  The heart first hides the underlying process but compensates by doing this to your heart:

1- Enlargement to the muscle of the heart (causing “dilatation”) which allows more blood into the heart.

2- Thickening of muscle fibers (causing “hypertrophy”) to strengthen the heart muscle, which allows the heart to contract more forcefully and pump more blood.

3- More frequent contraction, which increases circulation.

By making these adjustments, or compensating, the heart can temporarily make up for losses in pumping ability, sometimes for years. However, compensation of the organ can only last so long, not forever (like anything in life the living thing or an object will go through a ending life process to termination). Eventually the heart cannot offset the lost ability to pump blood, and the signs of heart failure appear.

DIAGNOSING CHF:

In many cases, physicians diagnose heart failure during a simple physical examination. Readily identifiable signs are shortness of breath, fatigue, and swollen ankles and feet. The physician also will check for the presence of risk factors, such as hypertension, obesity and a history of heart problems.

Using a stethoscope, the physician can listen to a patient breathe and identify the sounds of lung congestion. The stethoscope also picks up the abnormal heart sounds indicative of heart failure.

If one or not both symptoms or the patient’s history point to a clear cut diagnosis, the physician may recommend any of a variety of laboratory tests, including, initially, an electrocardiogram (EKG), which uses recording devices placed on the chest to evaluate the electrical activity of a patient’s heartbeat which will be affected by CHF.

Echocardiography is another means of evaluating heart function from outside the body. This works through sound waves that bounce off the heart are recorded and translated into images. The pictures can reveal abnormal heart sizes, shape, and movement. Echocardiography also can be used to calculate a patient’s ejection fraction which is a measurement of the amount of blood pumped when the heart contracts.

Another possible test is the chest x-ray, which also determines the heart’s size and shape, as well as the presence of congestion in the lungs.

Tests help rule other possible causes of symptoms. The symptoms of heart failure can result when the heart is made to work too hard, instead of from damaged muscle (like in a heart attack). Conditions that overload the heart occur rarely and include severe anemia and thyrotoxicosis (a disease resulting from an overactive thyroid gland).

Treatment=Prevention as the number one therapy of CHF:

-If not diagnosed yet your already possibly ahead. Without this diagnosis you can get started on making yourself further away from being diagnosed with this disease. How to reach this goal is through living a routine life through healthy habits practiced, healthy dieting over all, and balancing rest with exercise during the week 30-40 minutes a day or 1 hour to 1.5 hours 3 times a week and not being obese. They all would benefit the heart in not stressing it out making the heart’s function harder in doing its function. When the heart stresses out it is at risk for lacking oxygen putting it at potential for angina (heart pain) to a heart attack with over time leading toward failure of the heart.

TAKE THE STEP AND GET ACTIVE OR CONTINUE TO STAY ACTIVE IN YOUR , with healthy eating balancing with rest as well!  Always check with your primary doctor first.

“To put it simply, HF means the heart isn’t pumping blood as well as it once did. It’s no longer delivering all the blood and oxygen that the body and its organs need to work normally.   This can make average day life challenging”

American Heart Association

“We don’t have solid evidence that vegans live longer than vegetarians, or that vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters,” Montgomery says. “But we do know that eating low levels of red meat and high levels of lean meats and fish is a way to optimize your heart health.”

Tony Rahagan (author on Wed M.D.)

“Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.” 

Joseph Addison        (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician.

Healthier in eating than processed food!

With children going back to school the past 2 weeks a good topic would be health today in the U.S. and how it impacts the children in our society. It is the role of the government and people of America to help solve problems in our society, including our health crises.

Obesity is a health epidemic across our country, and we have a responsibility to promote good nutrition and healthy eating so we can reverse this alarming trend. Learning young about healthy foods to eat on a regular basis with moderation on treats, from fast foods to deserts, with keeping the weight in the therapeutic range or body mass index including balancing rest and exercise will help decrease the percentage of disease in this generation and the one to follow, hopefully.  

Let us not forget today’s mid age or later age people in America with disease factors already set in due to unhealthy eating for many years, you can also change your eating habits with exercising moderately and have better health results also (but it is recommended that your general practitioner clear you with diet and activity first.).

The government helps out by passing via Congress in 2010 rules required under a child nutritional law in their effort to get childhood obesity decreased to hopefully absent one day, like some countries. Society has gotten involved where schools took action with improving their lunches and even vending machine options with others still selling high fat & high calorie foods. Parents and teachers still have to work harder with reinforcing healthy eating habits in their children both in class and at home so that the future will be healthier for them and their children. For this to take place today’s children have to walk a pathway at a young age to get in the state of mind to strive for overall wellness . This will definitely decrease certain diseases caused by poor eating habits with sedentary lifestyles, sooner than you think.

From Feb. 2013 the agriculture department already involved regulating nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that have already been subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have a la carte lines that sell other foods and hopefully that has changed. Also food sold via vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated as of Feb. 2013. Mom and Dad your peeps need your guidance not just the schools or the government’s, since they don’t always use the best of judgment.  It has to start somewhere and the drive to a healthy USA is increasing, join me.

Do you want a better body, or a healthier society overall? Than take the action in walking the steps to eat, think, and act throught some exercise today. It would be great if America could spread this type of thinking in our society’s way of thinking and pass it on to future generation to help decrease disease and illnesses in our country due to poor dieting and poor healthy habits over years. Let us make a change for the better America.

“Some risk factors, like a person’s age or race, can’t be changed. Others are linked to cancer-causing factors in the environment. Still others are related to personal behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, and diet.”

The American Cancer Society

Cancer seems like a thunder bolt that it all of a sudden hits us from nowhere, like what happened to my Dad that was in 1999. Than the hit from nowhere makes the patient and significant others suddenly crippled and not prepared for this diagnosis (facing it with little knowledge). No wonder why cancer fears society. To top that alone it is costly, debilitating, depressing, and even fatal, like in my father’s case.

Early detection can vastly improve survival figures, that is not just pertaining to breast cancers but to most diseases period. Delaying to seek advice when changes are recognized is a big NO NO.

Let’s include in this article the seven warning signs of cancer:

*A sore that does not heal ———————————————————————————————-

*Unusual bleeding or discharge—————————————————————————————

*Obvious change in a wart or mole———————————————————————————–

*Change in bowel or bladder habits———————————————————————————-

*Persistent cough or hoarseness————————————————————————————–

*Thickening or lump in the breast or anywhere else in the body———————————————–

*Persistent indigestion or difficulty swallowing——————————————————————-

Instead of getting it wouldn’t you rather PREVENT it period. Remember our disease killers in the USA.     Our #1 killer is cardiovascular our #2 killer is cancer in America!

**Here are some general risk factors for cancer & try to prevent having them in your lives or abusing them (moderation – the key to many things that are not used that way in US). Abuse of anything results in disaster.

1.) Smoking (stop period) including chewing tobacco and dipping snuff.

2.) Diets high in fat or low in fiber. Obesity as well is a risk factor for cancer, odds are high that the diet was high in fat even causing the obesity in the first place.                    

3.) Age is over 50 or too much unresolved stress in your life.

4.) Abuse of alcoholism or inadequate amount of vitamins or minerals in your diet.      Exposure to environmental or occupational cancer causing substances (air, water, radiation, disaster like 9/11, or even food).

5.) Too much radiation from various sources (ex. Sun bathing to close to radiation treatments someone is receiving on a oncology unit, simply Sun overexposure).

6.) Fair complexion (pale) or even family history of cancers in the family (highest risk is within the nuclear family having a mother or father or sibling with cancer).

**Most cancers with heredity in the nuclear family including a bad life style puts that individual at higher probability of inheriting or getting that cancer.**

The American Cancer Society had presented shocking facts that 83% of lung cancer patients in America are caused by smoking (a complete preventable measure). Furthermore they present 30% of cancer deaths in America are due to smoking.

We the people of America can control many factors in our diet and exercise to control diseases period we have want to make the move and if we did disease decrease in time would be outstanding. In the end it would make our economy better with our insurance overall. Ending line. this means less disease, less expense, and meaning better coverage (less out of our pockets financially). For this to even get started we the people in the USA have to be willing to alter diets and exercise to a healthy pattern not a junk food frequently diet or sedentary lifestyle. Help make America a better country for all citizens of all ages. Our government surely hasn’t helped us in prevention tactics to lower statistics in showing less breast cancer significantly.

Looking over the past 35 years data shows very little evidence even with intense efforts and billions of dollars made by our government trying to aim at attempting to improve the treatment of cancer yet has had much overall effect on the most fundamental measure of clinical outcome…death. Cancer as a whole overall has slowly but surely lost ground in the battles and we don’t want to lose the war. This is shown by the rise in age-adjusted mortality rates in the entire population.

We do have many improvements with cancer treatment going from diagnostic tooling advancement with even drugs and drugs combined, a multitude of radiation methods and advanced surgical techniques. However, with all this due to increased cancer research, the government has yet to push the most important ingredient for cancer prevention. For every 3 dollars spent on cancer research, only one dollar goes spent in the area of prevention. When your government representa- tive speaks of further cancer research you may want to find out is it for prevention or treatment. My vote is prevention before getting diagnosed with it. That is like the government waiting for a bomb to land on the USA before taking measures to prevent it. Why wait for the disaster when it can be prevented completely and no mess to deal with. Makes sense? Sure does to me and many.

Take a completely different country in eating alone. Let us look at Japan and their women. They eat a completely different diet than women in the USA. Japanese women have ¼ the amount of breast cancer than American women; is this mainly genetics?   When Japanese women move to the great USA they assume our diets and get the same death rates from breast cancer that American women get when diagnosed with it.   My eyes see diet in America (fast food=JUNK). Moderation if not completely banded out of your diet = fast food. Americans who eat junk food on a regular basis are looking at abusing fast food as oppose to a treating themselves to junk food now and than (this is what we call moderation).

Moderation with anything legal and not abusive to your body (ex. Alcohol or prescribed drugs) is someone with will power. That is what is takes to prevent breast cancer and many other diseases which includes a healthy diet, some regular exercising, keeping your weight ideal to your body mass index, and having the yearly physicals or addressing new symptoms by going to your doctor to have him or she evaluate what it is with the treatment for it. Obese and can’t lose the weight on your own get a MD consult to see what surgery or other options you have to decrease weight.

FIGHT BREAST CANCER AND EVEN DISEASE OVERALL BY PREVENTION!!!!

“Breast cancer prevention starts with healthy habits — such as limiting alcohol and staying physically active. Understand what you can do to reduce your breast cancer risk.”

MAYO CLINIC

“Staying at a healthy weight, being physically active, and limiting how much alcohol you drink can help reduce your risk of breast cancer.”

American Cancer Society

“Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by social-interaction difficulties, communication challenges and a tendency to engage in repetitive behaviors. However, symptoms and their severity vary widely across these three core areas.”

AUTISM SPEAKS