Move Your Body!

Exercise and lifestyle changes can thwart heart failure down the road.

Symptoms of heart failure – fatigue, shortness of breath, and swelling in legs and feet – may creep up slowly or appear dramatically. Years of toil against high blood pressure, plaque-clogged arteries, and excess body fat gradually erode your heart’s capacity to move blood through the body effectively. The condition often germinates from the seeds of lifestyle choices planted much earlier in life.

“Cardiovascular disease can remain silent for decades, but even in its covert phase there are things you can do to slow or halt the destructive process,” says Dr Mandeep Mehra, medical director of the Heart and Vascular Center at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

A life cycle snapshot