Recognizing Your Heart Failure Symptoms

Helping You Understand Heart Failure

Heart failure occurs when your heart doesn’t pump blood as effectively as it should. Leading to severe impacts to your health – both your heart health and your overall well-being.

As a serious disease that can impact anyone at any time, regardless of the cause, there are four stages your heart progresses through as you continue living with the heart failure.

Stages of Heart Failure

Stage A

You may develop co-occurring conditions like diabetes during the earliest stage heart failure.

Stage B

While there aren't any physical symptoms yet, tests show changes in your heart’s structure.

Stage C

In addition to structural changes, you may start retaining fluids or becoming easily winded.

Stage D

Symptoms are severe enough to impact your daily life. You may need frequent hospital visits.

Recognizing Heart Failure

What Causes Heart Failure

Heart failure can happen for many reasons. Some common causes include:

Alcohol or drug use: Long-term use of addictive substances can damage the heart.
Birth defects: Problems with the heart that are diagnosed before or shortly after birth.
Cancer treatments: Some medications that treat cancer can thin out and damage the heart muscle.
Complications during pregnancy: The increased blood flow during pregnancy can sometimes reveal undiagnosed — or cause — heart conditions.
Family history: An increased risk for heart disease is passed down through families.
Faulty heart valves: Valves that don't work properly impact blood flow, leading to too much or too little blood being pumped to the body.
Heart attacks: Damage to the muscle causes the heart to stop beating, for a long period of time or entirely.
High blood pressure or hypertension: The heart beats with too much force, putting extra pressure on the arteries.
Irregular heartbeats: The heart beats out of rhythm, putting extra strain on the muscle.
Plaque buildup or coronary artery disease: The blood vessels get too thin from built-up plaque, impacting blood flow.
Viral infections: Viruses can cause inflammation in the muscle, damaging your heart.

 Symptoms of Heart Failure

Knowing the symptoms of heart failure can save your life. If you’re experiencing any of these, it’s time to request an appointment with one of our heart failure experts:

Difficulty sleeping: Shortness of breath or rapid heart rate is impacting your ability to fall asleep or stay asleep.
Fast heartbeat: Your heart feels like it’s racing even though you haven’t done anything to exert it.
Feeling very tired or weak: This is the most exhausted you have ever felt. Even the simplest things are hard to do now.
Loss of appetite or feeling sick to your stomach: You know you need to eat, but you can’t bear the thought of food right now. You’re nauseated all the time.
Muscle loss: You’re losing muscle tone and definition that goes beyond your lack of appetite and constant exhaustion.
Persistent cough or wheezing: Breathing issues like coughing and wheezing continue outside of allergy season or after getting over a cold.
Shortness of breath: It feels like you can’t catch your breath, even while sitting or standing still.
Swelling in legs, feet, and ankles: You’re starting to experience fluid retention in your limbs, even without increasing the amount of salt you eat.
Swelling in the abdomen: Despite not eating, you’re retaining so much fluid in the belly it looks like you swallowed a soccer ball.
Sudden weight gain: Retaining a lot of fluid over a short amount of time can lead to a lot of extra water weight, quickly.
Trouble thinking clearly. Brain fog, confusion and other memory issues are becoming a daily concern and impacting your life.

Meet Our Team

Find a Doctor

Slide 1 of 11