These abnormal symptoms are the early warning signs that you might have heart disease. They are often encountered in ordinary people who think they are healthy, even though they actually could already be in the early stages of heart disease.
Labored breathing and excessive fatigue – Labored breathing and excessive fatigue during physical exertions such as walking, running and working have many causes, including anemia, obesity, hypertension, lung disease, hyperthyroidism, heart disease and heart failure. Even anxiety and panic attacks can also cause fatigue. However, excessive fatigue due to heart disease and heart failure is represented in the form of tiredness, labored breathing and rapid breathing that occur especially during physical exertions, although in severe cases some people can even experience this while resting, and some people experience symptoms that are so bad that they cannot lie down (They feel exhausted or start coughing when lying down) and have to keep their head elevated when sleeping or sleep in the sitting position.
Heart palpitations, medically speaking, mean a condition in which the heart is beating abnormally fast or out of rhythm or irregularly, i.e., beating and then not beating, etc. These symptoms can be encountered in normal people, people with heart disease and people with other conditions that might affect the heart, including hyperthyroidism and lung disease. Doctors will conduct a detailed interview about the nature of heart palpitations in order to ascertain whether or not they are caused by cardiac arrhythmia. Oftentimes, the patient experiences heart palpitations while having a normal heartbeat, so diagnosing heart palpitation symptoms is not very easy, especially because many patients experience symptoms temporarily that disappear when they go see the doctor, making it impossible for the doctor to diagnose whether or not arrhythmia is the cause. As a result, people should learn how to measure their own pulse, so they can determine whether or not their heartrate is consistent over a 1-minute period. This information can make it easier and faster to render a diagnosis.
Edema is caused by the body retaining salt (sodium) and fluids in the body. It can be caused by kidney disease (inability to effectively remove salts), deep vein thrombosis (poor circulation), nutritional deficiencies, low blood protein levels, liver disease, certain drugs and hormones and heart disease or have an unknown cause (idiopathic edema). Edema in heart disease patients is caused by decreased function of the right chambers of the heart causing blood from the legs from being able to effectively return to the right atrium, which leads to increased blood accumulation in the legs. Chronic pericarditis can also cause this symptom. Therefore, when edema is present, the doctor has to investigate multiple systems of the body in order to determine its true cause and administer the right treatment.
Fainting and blacking out – Medically speaking, “blacking out” means temporary loss of consciousness or near-loss of consciousness. The person might experience wooziness, fainting, dizziness or blurred vision. These symptoms occur temporarily and do not include lightheadedness, vertigo, loss of balance, hot flashes and breathing difficulty. The symptoms can be caused by abnormalities in the brain such as epilepsy (even if seizures are absent) and brain hemorrhaging and heart conditions such as severe cardiac arrhythmia or temporary cardiac arrest, not to mention abnormalities in the autonomic nervous system responsible for controlling the heart. Blackouts can also be experienced by people who suffer from dehydration, blood loss, diarrhea or illness or who do not exercise or who are on blood pressure medications.
From the symptoms and displayed symptoms above, you can see that many diseases can cause the above symptoms. Therefore, you should not be negligent and should regularly monitor your own risks and quickly see the doctor before problems are too late to correct.
