Doctor Warrick
Welcome to Dr Warrick's Podcast Channel. Warrick is a practising cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education work believes educated patients get the best health care to discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love.
Hi, my name is Dr Warrick Bishop and welcome to my Healthy Heart Minute. A quick word today on what goes wrong in heart failure.
Well, heart failure is often characterized by shortness of breath and swelling of the ankles. Now, what's occurring in that situation is generally retention of extra fluid within the body. In cardiac failure the heart is just not pumping the fluid when it should be into the body, and it sends signals to the pressure receptors within the body and the kidneys, and the things are not quite right.
Well, from our evolutionary past, those signals would normally represent when we've lost blood, not when the heart's not working properly, but when we've lost blood. And if we've lost blood, the body turns on mechanisms to retain fluid to replenish that potential lost blood. So we keep the circulating volume. Anyway, the consequence of heart failure, fluid in the lungs and fluid in the periphery, is a consequence of that imbalance and missed mixed messages.
Hope that makes a bit of sense. In fact, I've done a podcast on the very topic which I think you'll find really interesting. Have a click and listen below. For now, however, take care. I wish you the very best and goodbye.
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST BY CLICKING HERE
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