Do you feel tired all the time? This could indicate a failure of this vital organ according to a doctor

A symptom that should not be taken lightly. In the continuous flow of daily life, we sometimes tend to put certain sensations into perspective or minimize them. In some cases, however, these sensations can be warning signals of a very real dysfunction in our body.

Thus, persistent fatigue felt day after day despite regular and consistent sleep can mean something other than a simple difficulty for your body to recover energy while sleeping. It happens that chronic fatigue is a symptom of heart failure.

A sign that the heart is having difficulty supplying oxygen-rich blood to the muscles

“One of the earliest and most neglected symptoms of heart failure is persistent fatigue,” says British cardiologist James Wetherby, quoted by Surrey Live. “When the heart is stressed, it has difficulty supplying blood rich in oxygen to the muscles and tissues, which gives a feeling of total exhaustion.

The English media includes this feeling of persistent fatigue among several types of chronic symptoms which should alert attention to a possible heart problem: shortness of breath (especially when lying down); swelling of the legs, ankles, or feet; unexplained weight gain; difficulty concentrating or frequent confusion.

1.5 million people suffer from heart failure in France

If you suffer from several of these symptoms, a visit to the doctor to check for heart failure is recommended. This disease is in fact much more widespread than we believe within the population. In 2022, Health Insurance estimated that it would affect no less than 1.5 million people in France, most of whom are aged 60 and over. With the aging of the population, this figure would even increase “by 25% every four years”.

Treatments exist to treat heart failure, provided that it is identified in time, hence the crucial importance of being vigilant with the symptoms mentioned above. The consequences of untreated heart failure can indeed be dramatic: there are around 200,000 hospitalizations per year linked to this disease, which kills more than 70,000 people each year in France, according to the Institut Pasteur de Lille.