Elizabeth Taylor, who hated being called Liz, died this past Tuesday after a second half of life battle with sickness and multiple ailments that wore her body down until her heart eventually failed. Ms. Taylor died of what is probably one of the most challenging conditions for a lot of senior citizens, congestive heart failure.
Taylor infamously suffered from a number of illnesses and injuries, including a bout of tuberculosis, a benign brain tumor, skin cancer, a repeatedly broken back, hip replacements, pneumonia and finally, congestive heart failure, which is in fact one of the most common causes of death in our elderly population.
According to the American Heart Association, congestive heart failure (CHF), or heart failure, is a condition in which the heart can’t pump enough blood to the body’s other organs.
This can result from:
- Narrowed arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle, or coronary artery disease
- Past heart attack, or myocardial infarction, with scar tissue that interferes with the heart muscle’s normal work
- High blood pressure
- Heart valve disease due to past rheumatic fever or other causes
- Primary disease of the heart muscle itself, called cardiomyopathy
- Heart defects present at birth, or congenital heart defects
- Infection of the heart valves and/or heart muscle itself, or endocarditis and/or myocarditis
The “failing” heart keeps working but not as efficiently as it should. People with heart failure can’t exert themselves because they become short of breath and tired.
As blood flow out of the heart slows, blood returning to the heart through the veins backs up, causing congestion in the tissues. Often swelling (edema) results. Most often there’s swelling in the legs and ankles, but it can happen in other parts of the body, too.
Sometimes fluid collects in the lungs and interferes with breathing, causing shortness of breath, especially when a person is lying down.
Heart failure also affects the kidneys’ ability to dispose of sodium and water. The retained water increases the edema.
For some folks that end up with severe cardiovascular diseases later in life, there are often contributing factors from their earlier years that impact the end result, which was more than likely the case with the starlet.
Now, we don’t know everything about Taylor’s medical history, so it’s hard to assess whether or not her lifestyle contributed to her medical problems later in life. There are many people who develop congestive heart failure as they age that may not have led a lifestyle associated with behaviors that increase the risk for cardiovascular disease.
But what we do know from widely publicized reports is that, in Taylor’s case, years of challenges with weight control, alcohol abuse and the use of chronic pain medications could have put stress on her heart that surgical interventions were not able to fully repair.
Family history and genetics can play a part in overall health, but by exercising, eating right and making responsible lifestyle choices, one can do everything possible to take care of your heart and minimize risk of potentially deadly health problems later in life and eventually death.
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Written by Sy Kraft, B.A.