Tag Archives: heart failure solutions

Should Swollen Ankles Cause Concern About Your Blood Sugar?

Taking pill

Do you ever get fat ankles? Swollen ankles may not seem like a reason to worry. Your swollen ankles indicate unhealthy fluid retention!

Do you think, “maybe I just ate too much salt”?

It’s a good idea to remember that sugar causes you to retain fluid, too!

Unhealthy blood sugar levels have everything to do with fluid retention.

This article on HealthLine.com addresses this very common problem without quite telling you WHEN to seek help: Continue reading Should Swollen Ankles Cause Concern About Your Blood Sugar?

ObamaCare: Is Your Elected Representative Refusing Medicaid That Could Save Your Life And Livelihood?

ObamaCare and Medicaid

Refusing Medicaid will cost citizens more than just their health.

Getting sick is a very expensive thing to do!

Even if you have health insurance, you may find that your share of the bill is far more than your financial portfolio can cover.

If you own anything, prepare to pay.

 

We’ve discussed why there is no transparency in hospital care pricing in a previous post.

Remember why youth makes you pay bigger health care costs?  It doesn’t make any sense and it’s not the fault of sick/old people.

It isn’t the fault of pharmacies or insurance companies either.

Nope, it isn’t ObamaCare either!

You’d be surprised to find out that the ONLY protection you have from the threat of financial destruction is Continue reading ObamaCare: Is Your Elected Representative Refusing Medicaid That Could Save Your Life And Livelihood?

Are You Ever Done With the Stages of Grief?

Old antique table

Grief is a very powerful emotion!

It seems to come in waves.

The first powerful wave tends to knock you off your feet.

It takes a while to get up.

Once you get your feet under you, the next wave can surprise you just as much!

Dog Gone!  You thought you had this under control.  You thought you were healing and moving forward.

Time heals.  However, healing tends to sets the stage for the next layer of grief to demand expression.

As much as you want to be done feeling like dung, you need to grieve when you need to grieve.

Do you see your grieving process somewhere in the list of the stages of grief? Continue reading Are You Ever Done With the Stages of Grief?

Aren’t Congestive Heart Failure Symptoms Obvious?

friendly young nurse helping senior woman with medical form

A Congestive Heart Failure diagnosis is a devastating piece of news to process.

Look up information online and you aren’t likely to feel very hopeful.

The bigger issue is that congestive heart failure can go UN-diagnosed for many years, so by the time you actually hear your doctor speak those words your disease process may be very advanced and your heart may have experienced a significant amount of damage.

Do you know the symptoms of congestive heart failure?

Heart failure symptoms

  • Shortness of breath (dyspnea) when you exert yourself or when you lie down
  • Fatigue and weakness
  • Swelling (edema) in your legs, ankles and feet
  • Rapid or irregular heartbeat
  • Reduced ability to exercise
  • Persistent cough or wheezing with white or pink blood-tinged phlegm
  • Increased need to urinate at night
  • Swelling of your abdomen (ascites)
  • Sudden weight gain from fluid retention
  • Lack of appetite and nausea
  • Difficulty concentrating or decreased alertness
  • Sudden, severe shortness of breath and coughing up pink, foamy mucus
  • Elevated blood pressure
  • Profuse sweating
  • Chest pain, if your heart failure is caused by a heart attack

(Article originally published on MayoClinic.com)

You can see that most of these symptoms are typical for multiple health issues.

Can you understand how your doctor might miss the clues?

If you don’t ask to be tested, you may not even hear the term “congestive heart failure” until you are in the midst of a health crisis.

Statistics show that this condition is often mis-diagnosed or just plain undetected by doctors for years!

An excerpt from the book Bypassing Bypass

Most people first hear the terrifying term “congestive heart failure” when they are hospitalized for heart problems.

Though recently it has been noted that the death rate from heart disease and cancer in the U.S. are dropping, the number of cases of congestive heart failure has doubled during the same time that all other heart disease rates have been decreasing.

The Weakened Heart
The heart is just like other muscles. When it is weakened, it becomes enlarged, congested, flaccid, and often prolapsed (dropped from its original position in the chest). It is not unusual to require a stethoscope placement three to five inches below the normal area when listening to a weakened heart.

In addition, a weakened heart simply cannot contract forcibly enough. Imagine if you had a weakened forearm and hand. Or imagine someone cutting off the nerve impulses to your fist. Now try to squeeze a tight fist. It becomes impossible. And in the end, you can only contract your hand weakly. The same thing happens with the muscle of your heart. Only in this case, due to a weak contraction, the blood entering the heart cannot be pumped out completely.

When this occurs, congestion takes place in the body. Your body is robbed of blood, nutrition, and oxygen. You become weak, tired, exhausted, and mentally spaced out. Your heart will often try to compensate by beating faster (trying to get the blood out with faster but weaker beats). When this happens, the condition becomes complicated by the tachycardia (racing heart).

Since nutritional deficiencies causing heart problems are rarely considered in the field of medicine, you are placed on powerful drugs that attempt to keep your heart beating and try to keep the congestion from becoming overwhelming. When your heart starts to race, more drugs are used to control your heartbeat. Meanwhile, you are getting weaker and weaker as your heart starves for the correct nutrition.

(Originally posted on MNWellDir.org)

There are 4 Stages of Congestive Heart Failure.

Unfortunately, you can be all the way in the 3rd Stage of Heart Disease and still have relatively few symptoms.

On WebMD.com they describe a person in Stage 3 of Heart Failure as:

Patients with known systolic heart failure and current or prior symptoms.

Most common symptoms include:

  • Shortness of breath
  • Fatigue
  • Reduced ability to exercise

(Information originally posted on WebMD.com)

 

However, a patient in Stage 3 of Heart Failure can also show up in the emergency room having never been told that they have ANY heart issues what so ever!

You may not even notice your symptoms of heart failure!

If you do, it is very likely that you will chock them up to something else … like getting old!

 

There is an epidemic of congestive heart failure ravaging the planet.

The Life Breath Club is dedicated to helping you recognize trouble before it threatens your well being.

Your free membership helps you evaluate your health care decisions and your Masters Membership will help you make the changes you need to make to AVOID health crisis!

Do you notice signs of trouble?

 

 

 

Do Beta Blockers Prevent Death Or Contribute To It?

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Your doctor prescribes yet another drug for you, this time it’s Beta Blockers.

Do you take it?

Is it responsible to question your doctor before swallowing?

It’s tough to feel confident enough to question your doctor, but if you don’t ask questions, do you know what you are risking?

 

First, let’s take a look at the side effects you might expect from taking Beta Blockers:

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) associated with the use of beta blockers include:

  • nausea
  • diarrhoea
  • bronchospasm
  • dyspnea
  • cold extremities
  • exacerbation of Raynaud’s syndrome
  • bradycardia
  • hypotension
  • heart failure
  • heart block
  • fatigue
  • dizziness
  • abnormal vision
  • decreased concentration
  • hallucinations
  • insomnia, nightmares
  • clinical depression
  • sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction
  • alteration of glucose and lipid metabolism.

Clinical guidelines in Great Britain, but not in the United States, call for avoiding diuretics and beta-blockers as first-line treatment of hypertension due to the risk of diabetes.

(article originally published on News-Medical.net)

 

WOAH!  Hold the phone!  Is it worth risking all that? Continue reading Do Beta Blockers Prevent Death Or Contribute To It?

Will the Affordable Care Act Address Rising Mortality Rates?

 

Elderly woman and her daughter

(Check out the video at the bottom of this page if you’d like me to read this post to you.)

These days many woman I know say they feel attacked from all sides.

From unequal wages for the same work, to invasion of their medical privacy, women are feeling like they are asked to carry way too much of society’s burden without being given the care and respect they deserve.

Perhaps a woman’s employer does not believe in birth control.

Should she be forced to pay out of pocket to avoid an untimely pregnancy that could cripple her financially for the rest of her life?

One of the natural treatments for depression is to plan your family so it doesn’t cause financial ruin!

 

What if her wages are so low that she just can’t afford birth control?

Is it fair to enter her bedroom and put stress on her marriage?

That same employer maybe happy to cover her husbands Viagra so that he can maintain his manhood, but what will prevent the children that he can’t afford to feed?

 

Below is an article from The Atlantic.

It’s got some alarming information.

After you read it, let’s discuss why women’s mortality rates should concern you even if you do not live in the “red zone”. Continue reading Will the Affordable Care Act Address Rising Mortality Rates?