Your Heart is a Muscle
Your heart is a muscle that pumps oxygen rich blood throughout your body. When you have heart failure, it means that your heart muscle doesn’t pump as much blood to meet your body’s blood and oxygen needs. Heart failure does not mean that your heart has stopped beating. It means that your heart isn’t pumping as well as it should.
When you have heart failure, your body will try to make up for your heart’s decreased ability to pump. It may do such a good job in the beginning that you don’t notice you have a disease. Over time, however, your body will be unable to keep up and you will experience symptoms from heart failure. These are some ways your body can make up for the decrease in blood pumped from the heart:
- The heart muscle gets bigger.
- The heart pumps faster to get more blood into the body.
- Your body will hold onto (retain) salt and water to increase the amount of fluid in the blood.