Heart failure is when your heart stops pumping enough blood around your body. The most common reason is because the heart muscle has been damaged, for example, after a heart attack.
Other causes of heart failure include, high blood pressure, problems with the valves in your heart, cardiomyopathies diseases of the heart muscle, and congenital conditions.
To maintain a healthy heart the British Heart Foundation advises eating properly and staying active.
A balanced diet, composed of fruit and vegetables, starch foods, and plenty of protein, massively helps towards reducing the risk of developing heart disease.
The British Heart Foundation says that to maintain a healthy heart special attention must be paid to fruit and vegetables, oily fish, fats, salt and alcohol.
Five pieces of fruit and veg should be eaten every day. At least two portions of fish, including one portion of an oily fish, such as mackerel, trout or salmon, should be eaten every week to improve your chances of survival after a heart attack.
Eating too much fat, especially saturated fat, can raise your blood cholesterol levels. In turn, this can increase your risk of coronary heart disease.
To cut back on the amount of fat you eat BHF advises that saturated fats are replaced with small amounts of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.
You should also eat lean cuts of meat and use semi-skimmed or skimmed milk and low-fat cheese.
Reducing salt and alcohol intake also helps to lower blood pressure.
Studies suggest that being physically active in middle age can increase your life expectancy by two years, the same benefit as giving up smoking, BHF says.
Your heart is a muscle and needs exercise to help it keep fit so that it can pump blood efficiently around your body, according to the BHF website.
The foundation advises that you build up to at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on five or more days a week.
Physical activity does not have to be running or swimming, but includes walking, gardening and climbing stairs.
Peter Hutchison
Telegraph UK