Dhe human heart is a masterpiece of nature. In an 80-year life, it contracts around three billion times, transporting more than 200 million liters of blood through the veins and is able to increase its performance many times over if necessary. Its only drawback: This high-performance pump can only replace lost cells to a very small extent, if at all. Any damage or overstraining of your cells therefore harbors the risk of sooner or later leading to heart muscle weakness, heart failure. It is no coincidence that so many people are affected – in Germany alone it is estimated that there are three to four million. Many health disorders, especially widespread ones, literally put pressure on the heart, choking it off air or otherwise distressing it. The most common include high blood pressure, atherosclerotic oxygen starvation of the heart muscle, diabetes, physical inactivity, and obesity.
But congenital heart defects, autoimmune diseases and infections sometimes put so much strain on the circulatory organ that its strength is exhausted over time. As different as the causes may be: heart failure almost always manifests itself in the same way. If it is already well advanced, the patients get out of breath even with little physical exertion. Even simple activities such as getting dressed or brushing your teeth can become an insurmountable hurdle. As the blood builds up in their veins, those affected also suffer from water retention in the legs and lungs. This underscores the urgency of identifying and addressing impending heart failure early on.