Your heart can be thought of as a sort of central room in your body that commands all the other rooms and keeps them functioning in good order. The valves of your heart can be thought of as doorways within this central room. These doorways open and close and so regulate the flow of blood. For example, your heart’s main pump pumps blood to a valve, which opens and allows the blood to flow to an artery, which connects to other arteries, and so forth. As soon as the valve releases the blood, it closes, in case any blood should creep back into the main pump.
In this way, your heart remains in good shape, regulating blood flow, sending oxygen-rich blood all throughout your body, keeping your body healthy, happy, and alive, full of energy and good spirits. So long as the valves open up to let the blood through, and close again to disallow the blood from creeping back, everything is fine.
Your heart, after all, is a complicated machine like other complicated machines. That is, it operates according to a system. It works by rules and regulations, and doesn’t like surprises. You wouldn’t, for example, put water inside your gas-powered lawn mower. It would ruin the motor. Your heart operates according to laws that are just as fixed as anything sitting in your garage.
Heart valve disorders present a particular problem to the heart. What happens is, the heart valve opens, but doesn’t shut properly afterward. The blood flows out; and then creeps back in again. This is essentially the definition of a heart valve disorder. The other kind of heart valve disorder that you need to be aware of is when the heart valve narrows, and doesn’t allow the proper volume of blood to flow through. In either case, excess blood flows back into the heart, which makes it work harder than it was designed to do.
Now, yourheart can work very, very hard. It can go years and years working overtime without ever letting you know. But eventually all that overtime is going to catch up to it, and it’s going to start displaying symptoms of wearing down.
These symptoms include fatigue. When you suffer from a heart valve disorder you’ll feel tired, overworked, listless. Chest pains can develop with heart valve disorders, you can feel a burning or a squeezing pain in your chest which can also spread to your shoulders and back.
In other cases, your heart valve disorder can lead to irregular heartbeat: your heart will feel funny, as it it’s skipping a beat from time to time or fluttering about. In more dramatic cases of heart valve disorder, you can feel so lightheaded that you lose consciousness. You can develop a heavy, heavy cough, and even find blood in your spittle.
The best way to treat a heart valve disorder is to see your doctor regularly and often. He or she will listen to your heart, and take special photographs if necessary which will show if there’s any damage being done.
Another way to avoid heart valve disorder is to avoid the things you’ve always been told to avoid. Don’t smoke, don’t drink alcohol in excess, don’t eat too many fatty, greasy foods. Fatty, greasy foods equal fatty, greasy deposits up and down your arteries. This leads to blood blockages, which in turn leads to blood clots, heart attack, stroke, paralysis, and death.
It is possible to be born with heart valve damage. Some children have two flaps instead of three on their main heart valve, which forces the heart to work overtime. Some have illnesses when young which ravage the heart, forming scars that impede the valves from opening and closing properly.
Whatever the case may be, whether you have a heart valve disorder through no fault of your own or if you have it because of years of abusing your body, now is the time to act. Schedule an appointment with your doctor and work with him or her to stop the damage from continuing, and get on the road that leads to ahealthier heart and a happier life.