Complications Caused by Heart Disease

If you have heart disease, your heart will be less efficient at pumping blood. The blood vessels throughout your body, which facilitate blood flow to various organs, may become damaged as well. Let’s talk about complications caused by heart disease.

These conditions can have significant effect on your heart as well as your other organs. The harder your heart has to work to maintain the blood circulation to your body, the more likely it is that you’ll experience one of the major complications from heart disease.

Heart Disease’s Major Complications

Heart disease can cause serious health issues and events that affect your heart, events such as heart attacks and congestive heart failure. It can also cause renal failure.

Heart Attack

Heart disease can limit not only the blood flow throughout your body but also the supply of blood to your heart. The proper supply of oxygenated blood can be restricted due to plaque buildup in your coronary arteries, in a condition known as coronary artery disease. This is the primary cause of heart attacks.

During a heart attack, the cells in your heart don’t receive enough oxygen; without oxygen, the cells begin to die.

Common symptoms of a heart attack include chest pain, shortness of breath, and pain in other areas of your upper body like your arms, jaw, and neck. These symptoms can vary between men and women, with women being more likely to experience jaw or back pain and shortness of breath in addition to or sometimes instead of chest pain.

If you experience chest pain or otherwise believe you might be having a heart attack, seek medical treatment immediately. It’s better to be overly cautious than to ignore the symptoms just in case you really are experiencing a heart attack.

Congestive Heart Failure

Congestive heart failure is one of the complications caused by heart disease. It’s caused by the narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to your heart because of plaque buildup in your arteries. It’s named after the ‘congestion’ that occurs in body tissue when your blood is unable to circulate properly. Congestive heart failure often causes swelling in your legs and ankles.

Heart failure can also be systolic or diastolic. Diastolic heart failure means your heart isn’t properly relaxing between beats, while systolic means it isn’t properly contracting.

Renal Failure

Chronic kidney disease affects about 14 percent of the population; one of its most common causes is high blood pressure. Long-term high blood pressure, or hypertension, damages the arteries that supply blood to your kidneys and leaves them unable to filter waste in your blood properly. Damage to your blood vessels from heart disease can make this worse and can speed up the progression of kidney disease to renal failure.

When you are in renal failure, your kidneys are no longer able to filter blood on their own. Renal failure is irreversible, and if left untreated, can be life-threatening. If you are unable to receive a kidney transplant, it will be necessary for you to be on dialysis for the remainder of your life.

Avoiding These Complications

The most effective way to reduce your risk of having a heart attack, congestive heart failure, and renal failure is to target the factors that put you most at risk of developing heart disease in the first place.

Heart Disease Treatment 

Many heart disease treatment methods involve lifestyle changes, which can be used to improve your overall health , whether you already have the warning signs of heart disease or not. Improve the strength of your heart by practicing routine exercise and avoiding eating too much processed food, sugar, and sodium. Making these small changes can have a significant impact on your health.

If you already live with heart disease, speak to your doctor about your concerns regarding heart complications. Your health care professional will advise you on potential lifestyle changes, and/or may recommend medication treatment.

Kidney Disease Treatment

Because heart disease can interfere with blood flow to the kidneys, take steps to improve the health of your kidneys too.

Kidney-friendly diets are low in protein, and they avoid minerals that are harder for your kidneys to process; minerals like phosphorus and potassium. Nutrition plans like the renal diet emphasize whole grains, fruits, and vegetables as part of a balanced meal.

It’s just as important to avoid excess sodium and fat in your diet for your kidneys’ sake as it is for your heart’s sake, and exercise can help here as well. Heart-healthy and kidney-friendly lifestyles are compatible with each other. It’s an excellent idea to follow both if you want to prevent both heart and kidney disease.

Final Thoughts

The complications of heart disease can be life-threatening, and it’s in your best interest to make every effort to try to prevent their occurrence. Always take the risk of developing heart disease seriously, and take positive steps to manage the condition before it results in a heart attack, congestive heart failure, or renal failure.

This article was originally published on my blog: https://ThinStrongHealthy.com

Helping You Achieve Major Wellness!

Cheryl A Major, CNWC

I’m author, health coach, and entrepreneur Cheryl A Major, and I would love to connect with you! If you’re new to the world of creating better health, both mental and physical for yourself, please check out my training on how to get gluten out of your diet. Becoming Gluten Free Me is where to check it out. Learn how gluten affects us and how to go about reducing or eliminating it from your diet. You don’t have to suffer with Celiac Disease to benefit from getting gluten out of your life!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter so you won’t miss my daily postings for health, wellness and mindset!