Living with heart failure
Take care of your heart.
Sam keeps your resting heart rate, activity, sleep and symptoms in one place. You take that history to your next appointment.
Step by step: how the heart fills and pumps, what changes with heart failure and where people notice it. The model shows the heart and the start of its large vessels.
The heart
The heart is a muscular pump. Its two lower chambers push blood out, the right one to the lungs, the left one to the rest of the body.
Heart
A human figure, seen from the front at an angle. The heart in the chest turns rose; the large vessels around it stay grey. The heart beats at a calm resting pace, the upper chambers just before the lower ones.
Each heartbeat
Between beats the heart relaxes and fills with blood; then its muscle contracts and pumps the blood out. This supplies organs and muscles with oxygen.
Atria / Ventricles
Close view of the heart, the large vessels dimmed around it. With each beat the upper chambers contract first, then the lower chambers, at a calm resting pace.
Heart failure
In heart failure, the heart cannot pump as much blood as the body needs. In some people the heart muscle is too weak to pump properly; in others the heart is too stiff to relax and fill well between beats.
Ventricles
Same view, turned slightly. The lower chambers turn a deeper, muted rose. The heart keeps its pace, but each beat is a smaller movement than before, which stands for less blood being pumped.
Day to day
Typical symptoms are breathlessness, tiredness and swollen ankles. Fluid can collect in the legs and the lungs. Breathlessness can come with exertion or when lying flat.
Worth discussing with your doctor.
New or severe symptoms need a doctor. Chest pain, fainting or sudden breathlessness: call emergency services.
Breathlessness / Tiredness
The view pulls back to the figure from the head to the thighs. The heart returns to a neutral grey and keeps beating with the smaller movement. A soft rose area marks the chest, for breathlessness, and a fainter tint covers the body from the neck down, for tiredness.
Own simplified illustration based on the sources above.
The model shows the heart's atria and ventricles from outside and, for orientation, the start of the large vessels. Heart valves, the inside of the chambers, the lungs, the leg veins and the rest of the circulation are not in the model. Each heartbeat is shown as a small change in size, the atria just before the ventricles. In the heart failure step the smaller movement stands for the heart not pumping as much blood as the body needs, and the deeper rose of the ventricles marks the condition. The model cannot show whether the heart muscle is weak or stiff. In the stiff form the heart can still squeeze strongly but fills less; the smaller movement is a symbol for both forms, not a picture of how the muscle moves. The two ventricles share one wall in the model, so the tint covers both, although heart failure can affect the left side, the right side or both. Fluid in the lungs and swollen ankles are not shown. The rose area on the chest marks where breathlessness is felt, the faint tint on the body stands for tiredness; neither shows a cause or a measurement. In the last step the heart turns grey to move the focus to the body; the smaller movement continues. Adult male reference model; close-ups are not to scale.
What Sam keeps for you
For people living with heart failure who want a record for their appointments. Sam is not a medical device. It keeps what you and your wearable already produce and puts it in one place.
Your Apple Watch, Oura, Whoop or Garmin already records them, and you add what you log. Sam reads them from Apple Health and shows you how they shift against your personal baseline.
Check in on most days, and once a month it becomes a PDF for your appointment.
How much blood the heart pumps is outside what an Apple Watch can record. Sam keeps what you notice and what your Watch produces.
Sam reads the data your wearable already writes to Apple Health and compares it to your personal baseline - understandable, not a wall of numbers.
Steps, movement and rest from Apple Health show whether your weeks are getting more active or more restful.
You see all three as a trend next to your own average. It is an overview, not a medical assessment. For symptoms, talk to your care team.
The free monthly report shows your weeks between appointments as a PDF. You bring it along instead of reporting from memory.
Sam is a wellness companion, not a medical device. The app does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness and does not replace medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare professional for medical decisions.
Sam shows your values next to your entries. What they mean is something to talk through with your doctor.
You ask a question, Sam answers with your own numbers. For example:
The monthly report sums up your weeks - for appointments, applications, or simply your own record.
Monthly Report - June
Your Health Overview
Resting heart rate
Activity
Example values. Your report is based on your own data.
Further reading: what wearable data can show about everyday life with Heart Failure - and where its limits are.
Cardiac rehab lays the groundwork for greater physical capacity - what happens next in daily life matters just as much. How to track your activity and recovery once the program's structure is gone.
Set up Sam for heart failure on Apple Watch, understand which metrics matter, and prepare wearable data for your next cardiology appointment.
Regular exercise is one of the highest-level guideline recommendations for stable chronic heart failure. Learn to recognize the warning signs of decompensation and when to seek immediate help.
Neither Apple Watch nor any wearable measures body weight or fluid retention. What resting heart rate and activity can show in heart failure, and why daily weighing is the critical tool that wearables cannot replace.
No. Sam is not a medical device, and the Apple Watch does not show whether heart failure is getting worse. Sam shows how your activity, resting heart rate and sleep compare with your own recent weeks, as a starting point for talking with your care team. If you notice symptoms like shortness of breath or swelling, contact your doctor directly.
That's best discussed with your care team. Your wearable already records steps, exercise minutes, resting heart rate and sleep without any input from you, and Sam shows them as trends against your own recent weeks.
You don't measure anything extra: Sam reads the data your Apple Watch or other wearable already writes to Apple Health. For the monthly report, Sam needs to know how you felt on at least half of the days. The Weekly Check asks about the past seven days in one go. Logging symptoms is up to you.
The ECG app and the irregular rhythm notification are regulated features from Apple, not part of Sam. Heart rhythm is a matter for those features and your doctor; Sam keeps your resting heart rate, activity, sleep and what you log. If your watch shows a rhythm notification, talk to your doctor about it.
Newer Apple Watch models offer a Blood Oxygen feature that estimates levels in the background, but Apple states it is not intended for medical use. If your watch saves blood oxygen readings to Apple Health, Sam shows them next to your other values. For questions about your oxygen saturation, your care team is the right place to ask.
Yes, for symptoms and daily context. You log your symptom days yourself in the symptom diary, and Sam fills in resting heart rate, steps, exercise minutes, respiratory rate and sleep duration. Sam does not measure your weight - that goes into Apple Health as usual, and what follows from it is a conversation with your clinician.
Download Sam for free, connect Apple Health, and see what your data says about everyday life with Heart Failure - compared to your own baseline.
Sam is a wellness companion, not a medical device. Sam does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness and does not replace medical advice. For health questions or concerns, always consult a qualified medical professional.