In several cases, the symptoms of congestive heart failure are not present (in other words, you may experience no any symptoms). On the other hand, the symptoms can occur with mild to severe signs, which can ‘come & go’ or be constant.
Common signs of congestive heart failure
You may also like to read about what actually is congestive heart failure, before continuing! If the symptoms are present, they may include:
- Irregular heartbeats or rapid heartbeats! This means your heart beats more quickly in order to pump more blood to meet the body needs. The heartbeats are relatively faster when we are doing a certain exercise, but in people with heart failure the rapid heartbeats can occur without a clearly reason.
- Water or fluid retention! The weakening of the heart muscles will make the heart cannot pump powerfully blood or supply adequately blood to the kidneys. This condition can reduce the performance of kidneys to excrete the fluid or water. Less blood in the kidneys can cause water or fluid retention, resulting in swollen legs, weight gain, edema (swollen abdomen), and swollen ankles. This also can lead to nausea or a loss of appetite due to bloating in the stomach.
- Weakness, more fatigue, and dizziness! Less blood supply for many organs of the body can make you be easy to get weak and tired. Furthermore, poor blood supply for the vital organ like brain will cause confusion or dizziness.
- Then another symptom of congestive heart failure is congested lungs! The decreased performance of kidneys may also cause more fluid accumulation in the lungs, and this can lead to a serious problem for your breathing. You will experience shortness of breath when doing certain activities (particularly like when doing an exercise). Shortness of breath may also occur when you are only lying in your bed. The other effects of congested lungs are dry wheezing or hacking cough!
What else you need to know?
When you have symptoms of congestive heart failure, you may experience one or more of all these symptoms. Or even as mentioned before, you may not experience any signs (the worst condition because the diagnosis of the disease can be made more difficultly).
But the explained symptoms above are not always equal to the condition of your heart (how weak the heart)! In other words, sometimes although you have a lot of symptoms but you may get the diagnosis of only mildly weakened. On the other hand, you have one symptom or none but you may get the diagnosis of a more severely damaged heart!
If you in doubt with your condition, talk with your doctor immediately to get more advices and clearly diagnosis! Read also about congestive heart failure life expectancy!
-- Image credit to ‘Getty Images’ for illustration
