Your Health Matters – The Kairwell Health & Wellness Education Library

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is defined as inability of the heart to either 1. Contract with enough force to eject an appropriate amount of blood to the body or 2. Relax appropriately to allow the heart to fill properly and eject an appropriate amount of blood to the body. When this happens blood backs up in the lungs or fluid retention occurs causing swelling of the legs and weight gain.

Coronary artery disease, or heart disease, is defined as the abnormal build-up of hardened cholesterol and plaque that narrows the heart arteries and limits blood flow to the heart. Coronary artery disease leads to acute coronary syndrome and heart attack when blood flow through a heart artery is suddenly blocked. Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in the United States affecting over 16 million people and causing more than 600,000 deaths per year.

There are several classes of oral medicines that have been developed to treat people with type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is high blood sugar caused by the body being resistant to insulin and insulin production being inadequate to make up for this resistance. Insulin works by stimulating the body to absorb blood sugar. The classes of oral diabetes medications include:

Millions of Americans take medicines for many different health conditions. Many do not understand the seriousness of the health conditions being treated or the importance of the medicines that have been prescribed. This lack of understanding about health conditions is called medical illiteracy and is a significant contributor to noncompliance – or people failing to take their medicines and incorporate diet and lifestyle changes as prescribed by their healthcare providers.

Water pills, also known as diuretics, are a type of medication used to treat multiple medical problems including high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and fluid retention. As a matter of fact, diuretics are probably the most effective means of providing symptomatic relief for people who are in symptomatic congestive heart failure. These medications act on various locations within the kidneys causing increased loss of body water through urination. 

Your health care provider may prescribe a category of medication called a calcium channel blocker (CCB) for multiple medical conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and abnormal heart rhythm. Commonly prescribed CCB’s include amlodipine, nifedipine, felodipine, and diltiazem.

Blood thinners are a class of medications commonly used to treat medical conditions such as ischemic stroke (blockage in an artery feeding the brain), atrial fibrillation (afib), blood clots in the arms, legs, or lungs, and other disorders that make the blood prone to excessive clotting. Coumadin (warfarin) has been used the longest and is probably the most recognizable of the blood thinners, but new classes of “novel” anticoagulants have been developed and their use has increased rapidly. These novel anticoagulants include dabigatran (pradaxa), rivaroxaban (xarelto), and apixaban (eliquis).

Beta blockers are a class of medication that your health care provider may provide to treat one or more medical conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, abnormal heart rhythms, and congestive heart failure. There are other reasons that a beta blocker may be prescribed for you including migraine headaches, tremors, and anxiety. You can easily determine if you have been prescribed a beta blocker by identifying the letters -lol at the end of the medications generic name. 

If you have had a stent placed in one of your coronary arteries or experienced a stroke or mini-stroke it is likely that your health care provider has prescribed an anti-platelet medication to help prevent recurrence of obstruction in the arteries supplying blood to your heart or brain. These medications work by blocking the action of platelets, a component of the blood that is involved in the formation of blood clots.