The Beating Truth: Heart Disease and Heart Failure Explained

Have you or someone you love been diagnosed with a heart disease?  Listen and get show notes here: https://bit.ly/47eGuHC 

Heart disease has been the #1 killer in the United States for more than a century—and most of the time, it’s fueled by lifestyle choices we make every day.

In this episode, we break down what really happens inside your heart when plaque builds up, arteries harden, or blood flow gets blocked. You’ll learn how to recognize the early warning signs of coronary artery disease, the often-overlooked symptoms of heart attacks (especially in women), and why heart failure is a life-changing but manageable condition.  

From chest pain and shortness of breath to daily habits that can protect your heart, we’ll cover practical strategies, medication essentials, and simple lifestyle changes that may help you live longer and better. 

#HeartHealth #TheSilentKiller #KnowTheSigns #HeartAttackAwareness #HealthyLiving #EatForYourHeart #MoveForYourHeart #WomenAndHeartDisease #WellnessPodcast #HealthTips #HealthyChoices #PreventionIsPower 

In this Episode:

• 03:00 - Recipe of the Week - Spicy Chorizo Sliders
• 03:49 - Things I Never Document, by Nurse Krypton
• 07:07 - Understanding Heart Disease
• 09:51 - Coronary Artery Disease
• 10:48 - Symptoms of a Heart Attack for Men and Women
• 13:42 - How to Manage Heart Failure
• 20:38 - Film Review: Sketch, with Tim Hartman - An Uplifting Story About Family Coping with Grief

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:00 Recipe of the Week - Spicy Chorizo Sliders
• 3:49 Things I Never Document, by Nurse Krypton
• 7:07 Understanding Heart Disease
• 9:51 Coronary Artery Disease
• 10:48 Symptoms of a Heart Attack for Men and Women
• 13:42 How to Manage Heart Failure
• 20:38 Film Review: Sketch, with Tim Hartman - An Uplifting Story About Family Coping with Grief
• 35:47 Outro

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies. This week's discussion is about heart disease and heart failure, which is a lasting, progressive condition where the heart muscle becomes weakened or stiff and can no longer effectively pump blood. Over time, this leads to fluid buildup, fatigue, shortness of breath, and reduced ability to perform everyday activities.

You might not think of this as a serious illness that can result in death, but heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. So relax and put your feet up. This makes it easier for your heart to pump blood all the way to your feet and then get it back.

And settle in for our podcast about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. Our discussion about heart failure is in the second half, so if you need to, skip ahead to this week's topic. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 47 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life.

And I'm Charlie Navarrete, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We're both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions before a crisis hits. Remember, this podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice.

Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. In the first half, Charlie has a poem from Nurse Krypton in our Recipe of the Week. In the second half, I'll be talking about heart failure.

And in the third half, my friend from high school and roving film reviewer Tom Hartman joins us with his review of the film, Sketch. So Charlie, what's new? Autumn is in the air. I mean, it's been in the air for a while, but just, you know, the changing of the leaves and everything in the parks is just very nice.

I always like that time of year, or this time of year. What about with you? What's going on? Um, I don't know. I guess I'm being very boring again.

Sometimes boring is good. Just relax, let your mind wander or not. I kind of got in the mood and rearranged my whole office and put some wallpaper up.

And so I have like a different view when I'm sitting at my desk. Still a view of the lake, but a different angle. What's on your wallpaper? Um, it is almond buds, flowers, you know, almond flowers.

Kind of like an almond joy? That would be good. That would probably make me hungry if I looked at almond joys all day. Oh, yeah, good point.

Yeah. All right, very good. For our first half, our travels this week took us to Nevada, the home of Vegas, baby.

That's right. Rat Pack, martinis, buffet food, and all-you-can-eat dining experiences. Oh, a buffet all-you-can-eat.

Nevada's signature food is the Basque-style dish known as chorizo sliders. This mouth-watering delight consists of chorizo. A chorizo sausage patty is served on a toasted bun, typically topped with caramelized onions, bell peppers, and a slice of cheese.

This combination of flavors and textures has made chorizo sliders a beloved staple in Nevada's culinary scene. Bon appétit, baby. Next, a poem, The Things I Never Document by Nurse Krypton, who is a global nurse and changemaker.

They ask for notes, vitals, medications, interventions, blood pressure at 9 a.m., wound dressing changed at noon, IV line flushed out at 3.15 p.m., but there is no box to tick for heartbreak, no feel for the minutes I stood holding the hand of a man who had just lost his wife, no template for the way I swallowed my own tears so he could fall apart in peace. I charted her temperature, her oxygen, her pain score, but not the way she smiled when I braided her hair because she said it made her feel less like a patient and more like a woman again. There's no line to write that I paused at the door, took a breath, whispered a prayer, and asked for the strength to stay gentle even when I was breaking too.

I document the time I administer morphine, but not how I sat beside her afterward, listening to her talk about her late husband while death hovered like a shadow in the corner of the room. I sign off tasks, not moments, not the way a teenage boy let out a sob the moment his mother's monitor went flat, not the way I caught him before he hit the floor, not the way I stayed long after my shift ended because no one should grieve alone. The system asks for symptoms, but it doesn't ask for stories, the fears, the sacred silences, the way I sometimes go home carrying names I'll never forget and faces I still pray for in the dark because nursing is more than procedures.

It is presence. It is prayer. It is a thousand little acts of love that never make it into the report.

So if you ask what I do, know this. Yes, I take vitals. Yes, I give meds, but I also bear witness to life, to death, to pain, to resilience.

I am a nurse, and the truest parts of my work will never be documented. Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe for chorizo sausage patties. This is the part where we ask you for your financial support.

Your tax-deductible gift will go directly for supporting our non-profit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone. You can donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one dies, dot org, or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies. Marianne? Thanks, Charlie.

My topic today is about heart disease and heart failure, which are the leading cause of death in the United States and has held that distinction for more than a hundred years. While some people are born with dysfunctioning heart valves or a genetic tendency to high cholesterol, most of the damage to the heart comes from our lifestyle. Habits like smoking, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle can lay the groundwork for heart disease long before heart failure symptoms appear.

So let's lay some basic groundwork. The heart is a pump that's responsible for moving blood to our lungs to pick up oxygen and then pump that oxygen-rich blood to all of our organs. When the heart can't do this job, we die because our bodies cannot function without oxygen.

So heart failure is when the heart can't pump as much blood as our body needs. This ineffective pumping can lead to the heart stretching out, called cardiac enlargement or cardiomyopathy, as the heart muscle works harder to pump the same amount of blood. This can happen from heart muscle weakness, a stiff valve, or blockages from plaque buildup.

Plaque is primarily composed of cholesterol, fat, calcium, and cellular waste products. It forms when cholesterol lodges in the walls of arteries, prompting the body to send white blood cells to the area. The white blood cells attempt to digest the cholesterol, leading to inflammation and further plaque buildup.

Over time, this process can cause the arteries to narrow and harden, a condition known as hardening of the arteries or atherosclerosis. Lifestyle factors such as poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking, and obesity can also increase the risk of plaque buildup. Conditions that lead to plaque buildup on the inside walls of blood vessels are a big concern.

As plaques grow, they narrow the space available for blood to flow, which can cause symptoms like chest pain. Eventually, the plaques can break off and block an artery that carries blood to the heart or brain, causing a heart attack or stroke. There are a variety of different diseases of the heart that can result in it not working effectively to move the blood through our bodies.

Today, I'm going to briefly talk about coronary artery disease and heart attacks with a bit more time chatting about heart failure. Coronary artery disease happens when the heart blood vessels, the coronary arteries, become blocked with plaque. As plaque collects, it can reduce blood flow to the heart muscle, potentially leading to coronary artery disease, which can cause symptoms such as chest pain, known as angina, and shortness of breath, and it increases the risk of serious events like heart attacks and stroke.

Chest pain is a discomfort, heaviness, pressure, aching, burning, fullness, squeezing, or painful feeling in your chest. It may happen with exertion or if you become very upset. It can be mistaken for indigestion or heartburn.

Angina is usually felt in the chest, but may also be felt in the shoulder, arms, neck, throat, jaw, or back. Generally, it'll stop with rest. Coronary artery disease, when ignored, can lead to a heart attack called a myocardial infarction, or MI for short.

A heart attack happens when a part of the heart muscle doesn't get enough blood, meaning not enough oxygen, because that's what the blood is bringing. The more time that passes without treatment to return blood flow, the greater the damage to the heart muscle. Symptoms of a heart attack include discomfort, pressure, heaviness, or pain in the chest or left arm.

I've heard patients describe it like an elephant sitting on their chest. Fullness, indigestion, or a choking feeling may feel like heartburn. Discomfort radiating to the back, jaw, throat, or arm.

Sweating, nausea, vomiting, or dizziness. Extreme weakness, anxiety, or shortness of breath. Rapid or irregular heartbeats.

While chest pain is the most common symptom of a heart attack in men and women, women are more likely than men to have symptoms that may seem unrelated to a heart attack, such as nausea and brief pain in the neck or back. Women often describe a heart attack, chest pain as pressure or tightness, and it's also possible to have a heart attack without chest pain. Women are more likely than men to have these symptoms of a heart attack.

Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back, or upper stomach pain. Shortness of breath. Pain in one or both arms.

Nausea or vomiting. Sweating. Lightheadedness or dizziness.

Unusual fatigue. Heartburn or indigestion. Compared to men, women tend to have symptoms more often when resting or even when asleep.

Emotional stress can also play a role in triggering heart attack symptoms. Heart attack symptoms for both men and women usually last 30 minutes or longer and are not relieved by rest or taking a heart medication called nitroglycerin. The little pill in the little brown bottle that you put under your tongue.

If you think you're having a heart attack, do not delay. Call 911. If you have symptoms of a heart attack or think you're having one, get emergency medical help right away.

Don't drive yourself to the hospital unless you have no other way to get there. Quick treatment of a heart attack is very important to lessen the amount of damage to your heart, which brings us to heart failure, which is a weakened heart that cannot pump blood as well as it needs to to supply the cells with enough blood. This results in fatigue, shortness of breath, and excessive coughing.

Everyday activities like walking, climbing stairs, or carrying groceries can become very difficult or impossible. Heart failure is a serious condition and usually there's no cure. The heart tries to do what it can to adapt to the damage, but it just can't.

Medications and lifestyle modifications are the typical treatments. The problem for some people is that they don't like to take medications, so they take them for a while, feel better, stop the medications, end up in the hospital, and then the cycle starts again. Now, I know you don't like to take medicine, but once you have it, heart failure will be a part of your life for as long as you are alive.

So take your medicine to keep the heart failure symptoms under control and not stress your body by going off of them. So the type of medications that are used are diuretics. Now, you might hear them called a water pill because it makes you urinate a lot.

I have patients who tell me they won't take it if they're going out because they don't want to have to find a bathroom. Truly not a good plan. This pill treats what's called clinical congestion.

It pulls excess fluids out of your body to decrease how much work your heart has to do. It helps with the congestion in the lungs, helping you breathe better, and gets rid of excess fluid in the ankles so you don't have cankles and fluid in your abdomen. Digoxin is a drug that's given to slow down the heart to help it beat stronger and do a better job despite the existing damage.

Nitroglycerin, that little pill in a little brown bottle, should always be on your body if it's been prescribed. This little pill is placed under your tongue if you start having chest pain and it opens up the veins so that more oxygen can get to your tissue. Remember what happened to the godfather when Don Coleon dropped his nitroglycerin pills? Well, if you don't, he died.

Beta blockers improve heart muscle function, controls blood pressure, and stabilizes the heart. Case inhibitors lower blood pressure and reduce the heart's workload. So in addition to staying with your medication plan, that means taking your pills as prescribed, you can help yourself maintain your function by eating a healthy diet, which means limiting how much salt you eat, especially if you're a fan of processed foods, basically everything that comes pre-made in a package.

The more salt you eat, the more fluids build up in your body and the harder it is for your heart to do its job. Limit the alcohol you drink. For women, that's no more than one drink a day.

For men, no more than two. Avoid tobacco products like cigarettes, chewing tobacco, vaping, anything with nicotine. This makes your veins tighten up called constriction, which makes more resistance for your heart to pump against.

It's a lot of work and your heart's just not up to the task when you have heart failure. Now, exercise helps your heart. Your heart's a muscle just like your biceps and your abs.

Working a muscle makes it stronger. But be sure to ask your healthcare practitioner what your goals should be before you start. Weigh yourself every day before your morning urination and before breakfast and write down your weight.

Your weight reflects how much extra fluids you're carrying in your body. So if you unexpectedly gain weight over several days, call your healthcare practitioner. Doing this might just keep you out of the hospital.

Lastly, don't be afraid to call your healthcare practitioner if you're having any symptoms and keep your appointments for follow-up. Get a medic alert identification and have a heart failure printed on the back of the bracelet to inform emergency people or anybody else who's looking in case you can't say for yourself what's going on. We also have some great resources to help you manage heart disease in the show notes.

Also, the American College of Cardiology has a clinical tool that you can enter your data in to predict lifetime and 10-year risk of having a heart attack or stroke. The link for that is also in the show notes and it's pretty cool. Charlie, any questions? I didn't know that men and women have different symptoms for heart attacks.

I just thought, well, it's a heart attack, so one size fits all. Guess not. That was interesting, I never knew that.

Well, a lot of people don't and so because, you know, they might have experienced a husband's heart attack or something and they say, okay, I know what that looks like. And then a woman has a different kind of pain, they say, well, I know it's not a heart attack because when Joe had his heart attack, this is how he acted and this is different. Plus, women do have a tendency to kind of ignore aches and pains and that kind of thing and keep moving because that's what we do.

And it's important to know that the symptoms are different and, you know, get thee to the hospital because you don't want to damage your heart. Right. You know, the other thing you mentioned about tobacco.

So, yeah, I mean, I know that in general, but what about marijuana? And I don't mean just like recreationally, but, you know, sometimes people will, you know, will take pot for relaxation or even just for medicinal purposes. Is that? Well, marijuana doesn't have nicotine in it and it's the nicotine that causes the veins to tighten up. So, you're talking about nicotine products that you want to stay away from.

Right. Got it. Okay.

Thanks. Our third half features a film review by Tom Hartman of Sketch, a 2025 film. Let's have a listen.

Thanks, Charlie. We're here with Tom Hartman and he has a review for us of the movie Sketch. Welcome, Tom.

Well, hi, Marianne. How are you? Good. Always good to have you on the show.

Well, thank you. And I am excited to be on today because I have just recently seen one of the best movies I've seen this year. This is Sketch.

And it's about how a tween girl's drawings have started to take a dark and violent turn since her mother died. And then her sketchbook gets dropped into this magical lake and her drawings come alive. And it's funny because I was prepared not to like this movie because it was made by a new crowdfunding studio called Angel.

And this studio is a faith-based studio. And having seen a couple of other of these crowdfunded movies, the technical end leaves a lot to be desired. And, you know, I was expecting something loaded with, you know, religious messages and symbols.

And instead, I fell in love with this movie in the first 10 minutes. And if I hadn't known it was faith-based, I wouldn't even have thought it. I mean, this family doesn't even say grace before dinner.

Say, you know, Sketch is extremely witty and beautifully written story about a grieving family that embodies everything that's good about liberal theology. It has an interesting universal story populated by three-dimensional characters that drew my empathy and surprised me. It has a very strong female lead.

And the secondary woman, the girl's aunt, is also a very strong woman. And it has some of the most incentive special effects that I've seen in a long time. You know, I was saying how it caught me in the first 10 minutes.

Well, the movie kind of opens with a girl being called into a parent-counselor meeting because of these dark, violent drawings. And surprisingly, both her father and her counselor affirm her drawings as a positive way to deal with her negative feelings. And as the story progresses, this already strong young woman gains more confidence in her creativity and in her power.

It's just an uplifting, life-affirming story. You know, the most recognizable faces in the cast are the guy who plays her father. And people would have seen him on Veep.

And he played Buster Bluth on Arrested Development. And his sister, the aunt, she was a regular on The Good Place and Barry. Their brother and sister relationship is extremely well-drawn, and it mirrors the girl's relationship with her brother and these kids, those three kids.

The director of this movie, and it's his first movie, he has like Steven Spielberg's eye for casting and directing kids. That little girl, the actress is named Bianca Bell, and she like expertly navigates the steps her character takes from self-doubt to self-confidence. And she's equally matched by the boy who plays her brother and the boy who plays her tormentor slash crush.

These three kids are, you know, the ones who are on the quest to destroy all monsters. And beyond the sensitive writing and great performances, this is a beautiful, colorful movie to watch. And the special effects are extremely inventive.

The monsters come alive in the medium that she originally drew them in. So some are pencil drawings, some are pastel drawings, some are crayon drawings. And to defeat the part of defeating the monsters is using those materials against the pastel one.

You can throw water on it and it just droops into a pastel mess. Now, I, you know, I would warn people that, you know, with kids that this movie contains quite a few scary scenes, which I would surprise dad about a faith-based family movie. But, you know, if your kids are old enough to deal with like the representatives of the law guild or nasty apple trees who think of nothing of slapping a little girl and those flying monkeys, nothing in this movie, they'll be ready for everything that this movie is going to throw at them.

You know, we are recording this in late September. And right now, the movie, you can only stream it by becoming a member of this Angel Studios, or you can rent it from Apple and Amazon for $20. Now, and hopefully the prices will drop by Thanksgiving because this movie has something from everyone from one to 92.

And that's my review. Well, I have to tell you, I agree with you. And of course, from my point of view, what was fascinating to me is that it's a story about grief and about when, you know, we don't process our grief, that, you know, things can happen.

I always quote Shrek when it comes to grief, you know, better out than in, because if you keep it in something, you know, untowardly is going to happen. And in this family, the father is very aware and kind and his sister, they're selling the house and his sister notices that he's taken down every picture of the kid's mom. And he says, I took all of the mom's pics down the night she died.

So it's like he erased her from the house. And he admitted to never talking about her and never kind of having a conversation with the kids about the mom. So the daughter is responding to her grief by drawing these very violent pictures that are attacking her father, taking her father's things, or attacking this little boy who likes her who instead of just saying he likes her, you know, teases her and picks on her.

And so these things come to life and they go after the father, they go after this little boy. And they're just everywhere. And they're violent, like she draws a picture where one of them cuts this little boy in half.

And so these monsters are trying to cut the little boy in half. And they're trying to stop them from doing that. But all of this comes from the grief that the family's not taking care of.

And the father, I wrote this down when I was watching it, the father said, when he's apologizing to the children about this, he said, I never gave you time to hurt. And I thought, that is just a great message for parents to see in terms of when someone in a child's life dies, you need to give them time to hurt. And it's good for children watching it, who, you know, know then can learn that when I'm sad because someone has died, I can't just erase them and not talk to them because bad things can happen.

You know, someone could get hurt. So I really like that view of grief. And then the other thing that I really like, oh, did you want to say something to that? Well, you know, and it's funny because when the father says that about stripping the house of everything relating to his dead wife, that's something I did when my partner died.

It was like, oh, you know, I'm still committed to living in this apartment for about 10 months. So I just get his, again, closet full of clothes, take it to, donate it to the resale shop. You know, his stuff, you know, down in the basement in boxes.

And it was not until I'd moved out of that apartment that, say, you know, I started to bring some of that stuff back into my living space. Because the space itself had so much of him that like, you know, I didn't need any other reminders. So I thought that, you know, and, you know, it was like, oh, that's real.

You know, whoever, the guy who wrote this is this guy who directed it. He must have gone through this himself, you know, which, you know, made me love the movie even more. Right.

And what were you going to say? The other thing I really liked was this, the little girl drew all the monsters. And I mean, she, her pictures were graphics. So she drew all these monsters.

And then when the sketchbook is dropped into the pond, and they all come to life, her father, her aunt, her brother, the would be boyfriend, girlfriend, all try to help her get rid of the monsters. And in the end, as much as all these other people tried to help her, it really doesn't matter. Because she needs to fix it herself.

And in the end, spoiler alert, she has to fix it herself. And that's so much like, everybody can try to help you. But if you're going to kind of reconcile a death, it's something you have to do.

And, and the message on how to do it, you know, at a, you know, I figured by the time other people get to see this, they will have forgotten our spoilers. So the message, you know, the father brings out her get a whole box full of her drawings she saved from when her mother was alive. And they're light and funny.

And, you know, the message is, oh, well, to defeat the darkness, you have to bring in a little light. And that just hit me with like, whoa. So I think, I think we agree that this is, I think this is a valuable film.

And I have a feeling it's going to be one of those that is really going to endure. And I can see all kinds of merch coming out of it with all of these monsters that she's created. Sort of like monster.

Yeah, when that was popular. So I think we agree this is what two thumbs up. A two thumbs up.

Strong thumbs up. We can be Cisco and Hubert, right? Yeah. Well, thank you, Tom, for joining us today.

And we look forward to your next movie review. Thank you, Tom, for your review. Have you seen this, Charlie? No, I don't think I know this.

Oh, you should watch it. Please stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies. And thank you for listening.

This is Charlie Navarrette. And from the Raymond Chandler novel, The Long Goodbye, the French have a phrase for it. To say goodbye is to die a little.

And I'm Marianne Masso. And we'll see you next week. Remember, every day is a gift.

of your primary care practitioner, or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice, or delay in seeking it because of something you've heard from this podcast. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.

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