The mitral valve is a little but very important valve in your heart that opens and shuts between the upper and lower lefthand chambers. The mitral valve opens and lets blood flow out that the rest of your body needs to operate smoothly. It opens; and shuts. When it opens, blood pumps out; the purpose of its shutting is to not allow any blood to creep back in.
The reason that you don’t want blood creeping back in is that your heart wants to regulate how many times it beats, the rhythm it beats at, how much blood it’s pumping, etc. And so it allows only so much to go out the mitral valve. And the mitral valve shuts, and your hearts continues beating, and the mitral valve opens, and everything keeps running smoothly and efficiently and your body feels it and appreciates it and lets you know it appreciates it by feeling happy and well and full of energy and zest for life.
With mitral valve stenosis, on the other hand, you’ve got a problem occurring. Something in your heart suddenly goes amiss. What’s happening is, your mitral valve is opening just like it should, but hesitating a little when it comes to closing. And when it hesitates, blood creeps back into the heart’s upper chamber, just like that. And when blood creeps back into the heart’s upper chamber, suddenly the heart is having to deal with more blood than it’s used to. It’s having to suddenly pump more, pump harder, pump faster, in order to get rid of the excess blood.
Mitral valve stenosis can lead to some very uncomfortable problems. Mitral valve stenosis can leave you dizzy, it can take your breath away, breathing doesn’t come as easily as you’re used to.
There are multiple causes for mitral valve stenosis, but the most common one by far is that you suffered from rheumatic fever as a child. Rheumatic fever is usually related to the strep virus. Rheumatic fever savages the heart, it scars it, and makes the mitral valve thick and clumsy, like a door that’s been flooded so that the wood swells and it won’t swing properly on its hinges.
The good news is: whether you’re six or sixty, and are suffering from mitral valve stenosis, the disorder is treatable; that is, your doctor can work with you to fix it. Depending on how advanced your condition is, he or she will prescribe medications and remedies, changes of lifestyle, for example, which will work to alleviate the problem and hopefully get rid of it all together.
There are severe cases of mitral valve stenosis which will require sterner measures in order to be taken care of. These sterner measures can include surgery; you may even have to have your mitral valve replaced.
If you’re suffering from the symptoms described above, you need to schedule an appointment with your doctor as soon as possible. Modern medicine offers sophisticated machines which can take photographs of the valves in your heart and find out if your blood is flowing properly or improperly.
Remember that it’s possible to feel perfectly great, to feel nothing out of the normal, and still be suffering inwardly from mitral valve stenosis. Thus the importance of regular check ups. Let’s run through the list of symptoms again, so that you can check yourself and decide whether or not it’s time to schedule an appointment with your doctor.
– Tiredness
– Shortness of breath
– Chest pain
– Heavy, heavy coughing, sometimes accompanied by blood in your spit
– Swollen feet, swollen ankles