Disability and Heart Failure - What is heart failure?

As a disability examiner working on SSD disability and SSI disability claims, I found myself working on cases involving heart failure quite often (though, for some reason, SSA likes to refer to it as chronic heart failure instead of congestive heart failure). Now, as I think about it, I'm amazed at how many heart failure allegations I saw. However, at the same time I'm not really surprised.

Heart failure is a growing epidemic among Americans. It is estimated that almost five million Americans are living with heart failure today and that number is growing quickly every year.

You may be one of the many people who think heart failure means that the heart fails to work, resulting in death, but it actually means that the heart is not pumping enough blood for the body to function properly. Instead of resulting in death, the body does many things to compensate for this shortage of blood flow, from beating faster and holding onto salt and water, to literally expanding to allow for more blood flow.

Heart failure is a long-term condition that grows over time. Symptoms of heart failure can be mild, including shortness of breath, weakness, heart palpitations, dizziness and feelings of tiredness and exhaustion. Other symptoms may be wheezing, coughing, increased urination at night and swelling in the legs, feet and ankles.

Heart failure can be due to genetics, but is also a disease that can be a result of risky lifestyle choices such as eating foods high in cholesterol, lack of exercise, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. If heart failure is not diagnosed and treated, it can also lead to hypertension, lung disease and coronary artery disease.

To decrease your risk of heart failure make sure to eat healthy foods, exercise regularly and temper you use of tobacco and alcohol. You may also want to look at diet modification in the sense of eating smaller portions and staying clear of sugary foods and even excess amounts of carbohydrate rich foods.

Why? Excess weight, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease...all seem to go hand in hand.




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