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Heart patients have to pay attention to their weight fluctuations
People with heart failure should keep a good eye on their body weight. Especially a weight gain can be a warning signal. Heart patients are therefore advised to put themselves daily on the scales.
Weight gain due to water retention
If the view of the scale reveals that you have already gained another kilogram, it is not necessarily a calorie-rich diet that is responsible for the unexpected weight gain. Even the heart can be the cause. "Because occurs in a heart disease on a weakening of the heart muscle, as z. As is often the case over time in coronary heart disease, a heart attack or high blood pressure, it often leads to water retention in the body and a corresponding gain in weight, "reports the German Heart Foundation on its website.
Patients with heart failure should pay close attention to their body weight. Because with a weak heart it often comes to water retention and thus to a gain in weight. (Image: max dallocco / fotolia.com) Tired heart muscle
The water retention (edema) arise u. a., Because the flowing back to the heart blood is no longer pumped sufficiently from the weakened heart muscle and then forms a backwater in front of the heart, which can reach back into the abdomen or feet and there increase the pressure in the small veins.
As a result, more liquid from the blood is pressed into the local tissue and water retention occurs.
If these are not recognized and the weight gain is wrongly pushed onto the diet, this can have fatal consequences.
Because, in fact, there is a decreasing pumping power of the heart behind it, it is important in many cases, to check the currently ingested drugs and adjust if necessary.
Weigh daily at the same time
The German Heart Foundation recommends that all people with cardiac insufficiency weigh as much as possible on a daily basis. The experts explain what to look for:
Because of the natural variations in body weight during the day, it is important to weigh yourself at the same time of day. It makes sense to weigh, for example, directly after the morning toilet, before you have drunk or eaten something and is not yet dressed.
The scale should always stand on the same solid surface, because on different floors many devices show different results.
In addition, it should be checked from time to time whether the balance used is still sufficiently accurate, eg. For example, by placing flour on the balance with two kilo-packages and then without.
Normal fluctuations in body weight
When it comes to a weight gain in a heart disease that can not be explained with increased food or less exercise, is to think of the heart donation necessarily to water retention.
"Maybe there is a reduction in the pumping function of the heart behind it, which must not be played down in any case and should be medically clarified," the experts said.
However, it is not all-inclusive, from which weight gain you should be listening. This is because the normal variations in body weight are very different from person to person.
Some experts recommend their heart patients already from 0.5 kg to think of water retention, which can be quite useful if a person affected for a long time very carefully with his illness.
The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) refers in its guidelines to B. to a value of two kilograms in three days.
If a heart failure has been diagnosed, sufferers are often advised to move more. An adequate training program, which should be clarified with the doctor, the performance can be increased enormously. (Ad)