- Heart failure, also called congestive heart failure, is when the heart doesn’t pump blood as well as it needs to.
- Over the past decade, death rates from heart failure for adults between 35 and 64 years old have been increasing.
- According to experts, this is partially due to a “clustering of risk factors” in young adults, such as hypertension, high blood pressure, rising rates of obesity, and coronary artery disease.
- A healthy diet, regular exercise, and knowing your family history can help prevent and manage heart failure for those who are at risk.
It was just before the Fourth of July three years ago when John Sousa, 44, knew something was seriously wrong with his health.
For about a month, he had trouble breathing, which he initially passed off as part of his asthma symptoms from seasonal allergies. But this was different. His inhaler wasn’t working like it normally did.
Concerned, Sousa visited his doctor who treated him for an upper respiratory infection.
While some antibiotics and steroids improved his condition slightly, within 10 days, he was back at the doctor’s office. He was given another round of steroids and just days later was back. His breathing was worse.
“This time, the nurse asked me ‘weird questions’ like, ‘Did I have chest pains?’ Those kind of things. She was like, ‘I’m going to do an EKG’ (electrocardiogram), and the next thing I knew, I had an appointment to see a cardiologist the day before the Fourth of July,” Sousa told Healthline.
The results shocked him. Sousa was diagnosed with a chronic type of heart failure. He had no family history of heart disease.
“I couldn’t even wrap my brain around it,” he said of his diagnosis. “It was overwhelming. ‘I was going to die’ was the only thing I could think. I started Googling the survival rates and saw these terrible statistics. It took me probably about six months before I was able to wrap my brain around what heart failure was and that it was something that could be managed.”
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