Have you been diagnosed with heart failure? Do you want to know what you should be doing to manage this life-long condition effectively? Here are some top tips you should be following to ensure you can live confidently with heart failure and reduce the risk of requiring hospital readmissions.   1.    Weigh yourself every day after going to the bathroom. Weight gain is one of the first signs of acute heart failure because it means that you could be retaining fluid. Keep a daily record of your body weight and if you gain more that 2kg in two days you should call your heart fa ..read more

Are you worried about putting on weight? Or are you trying to manage/lose weight? In this blog we discuss why it is important to monitor your waist circumference and what you can do to reduce it, if needed. Did you know that a 1cm increase in waist circumference is associated with a 2% increased risk of future cardiovascular disease? Obesity and increased waist circumference are associated with several risk factors for cardiovascular disease including diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Waist circumference is a common and easy way to assess abdominal obesity.   Le ..read more

Do you feel anxious, stressed, or depressed after your cardiac event or after being diagnosed with a heart condition? In this blog, we look at the relationship between psychological stress and heart disease and what you can do about it. Following a cardiac event, 1 in 4 people are affected by depression, many of which are diagnosed with significant depression. In some conditions, such as heart failure, depression is even more common.   Having a cardiac event can be frightening and cause significant distress to the patient and their family members. The most common psychological reactions ..read more

Should I do cardiac rehab? As a clinician who has studies and worked in cardiac rehabilitation for many years, I am biased in my view of completing a cardiac rehabilitation course. I know that it will reduce anyone’s risk of another cardiac event, it can extend your life by 5 years but not only that it will improve the quality of your life withing those new life years.  These facts generally don’t convince many to do cardiac rehabilitation but someone said something to me last week and it really was profound. He summed it up in one sentence ‘It will stop you looking over your shoulder ..read more

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a very common risk factor for cardiovascular disease with an estimated prevalence of 30-45% in the general population, and an even greater prevalence in older adults. Have you been diagnosed with hypertension? Do you want to know how to prevent or manage hypertension? This blog outlines what hypertension is and what you can do to manage it. Hypertension affects millions of people worldwide and is often referred to as the “silent killer” as it is usually asymptomatic and undetected. If left untreated, hypertension can lead to serious health conditions such ..read more

Fatigue Fatigue or tiredness is a complex symptom, and there can be many reasons why you may feel tired. Fatigue results from an inability to produce energy efficiently. This can come as a result of doing too much and building up waste products in your body which is causing your fatigue. To produce energy, you need to be able to have a good fuel source and an ability to bring oxygen through your system to meet the fuel source in your muscle tissue to produce energy. As you breathe you are taking oxygen in from the air. This oxygen travels to your lungs and then into your blood stream and back ..read more

Have you been diagnosed with high cholesterol? Or does a member of your family have high cholesterol?   What is cholesterol? Cholesterol is a type of fat found in your blood and is one of the modifiable risk factors for heart disease. You need a certain amount of cholesterol for your body cells to function and to produce important hormones. Cholesterol is made mainly in the liver and the body normally produces enough of it to maintain a healthy level of blood cholesterol. Blood cholesterol can increase due to inherited problems or from eating too much saturated (animal) fat and foods from ..read more

In order to understand how the disease process associated with heart disease, it is important to consider how the healthy heart is structured and how it works.   The heart is separated into left and right sides by a muscular band called the septum. On each side of the heart there are two chambers; an atrium and a ventricle with a valve separating them. These chambers collect blood, and the valves keep it moving in the correct direction through your heart. The heart muscle squeezes to pump blood around your body.         It can be useful to think of the working of the ..read more

Are you experiencing breathlessness, chest pain (angina), unexplained fatigue, nausea, stomach pain, sweating, leg pain, arm pain, jaw or back pain, swollen ankles, and chest palpitations? Has your doctor diagnosed you with heart disease? What is heart disease? Cardiovascular disease (CVD) refers to all diseases of the heart and circulation but most commonly refers to coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke and other blood vessel diseases. Other heart conditions include congenital heart disease, heart valve disease and disease of the heart muscle (cardiomyopathy). CVD is one of the leading causes ..read more

You may have heard the saying, “sitting is the new smoking”. This phrase highlights that sitting for prolonged periods of time can be as harmful to our health as smoking. This may seem like an alarming claim, but there is strong evidence to confirm this statement. Prolonged periods of sitting are unavoidable for most of us in our daily lives. Recent research demonstrates the average person spends 60% of their waking hours sitting and this figure rises to 70% in people who are at a high risk of chronic disease. We sit at desks at work, in cars during our commute, and on the couch when we are re ..read more