Cardiomyopathy

Your heart muscle is changing. It grows thicker, stiffer, weaker — or it dilates until it loses its strength. Medicine speaks of cardiomyopathy: a chronic disease of the heart muscle tissue that prevents the heart from pumping as it should. Shortness of breath on exertion, fatigue, fluid retention, cardiac arrhythmias — the symptoms are real, burdensome, and often frightening.

But why does the muscle that drives your entire life change? Why does the organ that stands for flow, rhythm, and vitality become rigid or weak? Cardiology examines the biochemical and structural causes. BodySignal asks a different question: what is happening in your inner life that places your heart under a tension it cannot sustain over time?

Cardiomyopathy is not random wear, but the signal of a heart that has been forced too long in a direction that is not its own.