can young people get heart failure?

[noone]

can anyone help me out here,i am a 31 year old male. 6'1 260 pounds. i am very exercise intolerant and i have poor metabolism. when i eat healthy foods,i still can not lose weight. just recently,i went to the doctor because i was very winded and my ankles were swollen. after a full checkup and multiple tests,it was determined that i had congestive heart failure and an arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. i was put on lots of medication and it makes me very drowsy and out of it. my blood pressure was 218/118 at the doctors. so what i want to know is can someone my age really have heart problems?? i have stopped eating junk food and i try to walk slowly 5 blocks each day.

[aelle]

Absolutely. My partner's father had his first heart attack at age 29. He was at an apparently healthy weight and running marathons, too (just with a skyrocketing cholesterol and a poor genetic background). By all means, follow your doctor's advice.

What do you mean by "exercise intolerant"? I know from experience that exercise is really difficult when you are overweight, but even a little, even if you don't lose weight in the process, improves your health. Can you walk? Swim?

[Cosmos]

Yes NOONE it is very possible, I work in a medical facility, and my older coworkers keep saying more and more young people are coming in with conditions 50-60yo patients usually have.

That being said, it's good you are on this website, I hope this means you are looking for alternatives. By no means am I saying you should not follow your doctors advice/plan, bottom line is modern medicine is not designed to get you off of it anytime soon, so some exercise is a must but at a slow pace given your intolerance and condition, CHF makes it even harder to exercise- so GO SLOW, but go!!) you can do it, you have no other choice!!!

As far as exercise intolerance, I do think it is harder for some, I often get asked if im a runner, I have a runners' body but never ran as sport or leisure, I get winded very easily as well, all my life... I had to slowly build up to going to the gym 1-2x week & yoga...( that took years but its worth it) no treadmill just endurance for heart and lungs like eliptical or spinning with increasing resistance as tolerated!

I hope this helps... there's a ton of free info on the web so take advantage, but be cautious, run it by a MD,fitness trainer or nutritionist if your not sure.

[ButterflyWoman]

Exercise is a tricky one. The thing is to find something you CAN do, and do that, as much as you can and just keep doing it. After a while, it does get easier.

My preferred exercise is swimming. It's easy on the joints, and it can be as vigorous as you want or quite sedate, plus, I find it fun. I go at least once a week (usually more) to my local municipal pool. I don't push myself all that hard, but I've found that there has definitely been improvement in a number of areas, including some tightening of my upper arms and better breath control. So even limited exercise does have a positive effect.

For the ultimate "easy and cheap" exercise, though, just go for a walk. You want to move at a brisk pace, but not so fast you're going to get winded easily, and swing your arms, and walk for fifteen minutes one way, then turn around and walk back, for a total of a half an hour. Do that a few times a week and then ramp it up to every day and you'll certainly see improvement. You can make the walks longer eventually, as well. It's easy, and it really will help.

[stanmrak]

Originally Posted by aelle

Absolutely. My partner's father had his first heart attack at age 29. He was at an apparently healthy weight and running marathons, too (just with a skyrocketing cholesterol and a poor genetic background).

Sorry, but I won't allow anyone to propagate the myth that high blood cholesterol causes heart attacks. It just isn't true, and there's plenty of data to back that up. The drug industry has been promoting that lie for decades just to sell more statin drugs.

[aelle]

Originally Posted by stanmrak

Sorry, but I won't allow anyone to propagate the myth that high blood cholesterol causes heart attacks. It just isn't true, and there's plenty of data to back that up. The drug industry has been promoting that lie for decades just to sell more statin drugs.

The fact of the matter is that this person whom I know in real life had abnormally high cholesterol and a heart attack despite being young and fit. He didn't go on statins, just changed his diet.
Whether you believe that these facts are correlated or a coincidence, rather than causally related, is up to you, but the facts are here.

[Frisky]

A guy who lived on my street who's only in his mid 40's had a heart attack last year.

Its pretty scary

[Razia]

Ya here age don't matter its all about how healthy is body.