There’s no doubt that finding out that your loved one has heart failure can be overwhelming and shocking for both of you. As the term itself suggests, heart failure is a really serious illness that can cause numerous unpleasant symptoms and even reduce life expectancy. In general, heart failure becomes a chronic health issue that can be managed but never cured completely.

Now, if your loved one has had heart failure and you want to learn how to help them, continue reading below!

What to Expect?

Each case of heart failure is different. Yet, most newly diagnosed heart failure patients can expect a long period in which they can live quite comfortably as long as they follow their medical regimen and optimize their lifestyles.

Some patients with acute heart failure can even recover completely if the underlying heart disease, such as stress cardiomyopathy for example, gets eliminated entirely. Others, however, with an advanced or rapidly progressing underlying heart condition can end up with a much more serious clinical course.

Still, most people with heart failure have clinical courses that are somewhere in between these two extremes. This means that these patients are likely to have long periods of feeling well interspersed by episodes of worsening symptoms that should be medically treated.

As a person who helps a heart failure patient, you should focus on doing what you can to help your loved one maintain a stable condition when the heart failure is under good control while staying alert to recognize any signs and symptoms of progression so that you can seek medical help in time.

How You Can Help?

As a caregiver, there are several key things you can do to help your loved one live a comfortable life and avoid episodes of worsening heart failure, thus improving their long-term outcome. Here are some things you can help them with:

• Establish and maintain healthy and heart-friendly lifestyle changes
• Keep up with a complicated medication schedule
• Monitor the daily measurements and symptoms
• Recognize when it is time to seek professional medical help

Helping with Lifestyle Changes

Lifestyle changes are of utmost importance for a person with heart failure. Healthy and heart-friendly lifestyle choices, such as diet, exercise, and not smoking, constitute actual heart failure therapy. So, the best way to help with those changes is actually adopting them yourself, especially if you live together with a heart failure patient.

In short, ensure you consult their healthcare provider about the optimal diet that they should follow and always stick to it. In general, you should prepare a low-salt Mediterranean-style diet, abundant in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats. On the other hand, eliminate saturated fats and packaged, processed, smoked, canned, and pickled foods.

Furthermore, make sure that you understand the potentially serious consequences smoking can have on heart failure patients, like reduced life expectancy and frequent worsening episodes. Put briefly, smoking is extremely damaging to the cardiovascular system so helping your loved one quit smoking if they are a smoker is vital.

Finally, exercise is also an important part of heart failure management. Therefore, encourage your loved one to perform whatever amount of exercise they are capable of doing without getting excessively tired or dyspneic.

Helping with Medications and Monitoring Symptoms

Heart failure patients typically take a lot of medication so you must help them keep track of all the pills they are taking. For example, you could use pill boxes or a chart to keep track of what has been taken.

Last but not least, people who are helping heart failure patients have to be really attentive to all the symptoms their loved ones experience. That said, try monitoring the symptoms every day and mark the severity of them on a chart or in a diary. Tracking their dyspnea level, degree of fatigue, sleep quality and quantity, and the amount of leg or ankle swelling could be quite useful. All of these symptoms should help you recognize when the person is just having a not-so-good day, and when they should call for help.