Swimming helps man with heart condition enjoy life again

A man diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition said finding swimming as a way to manage and cope with the genetic illness has been "brilliant".

Dan Williams, who has Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), said it had taken a long time to get over the diagnosis.

He said the condition meant he had had to give up aspects of his life including the forms of exercise he enjoyed, which left him in a "vicious circle".

The 54-year-old said finding swimming had helped him to get back to living life in a normal way, while still being mindful of his condition and the limitations and dangers it posed.

Williams said he found out about the illness after receiving a phone call from his father in 2011 to tell him the genetic condition had been found in the family and he needed to get his heart checked.

After visiting the doctor, he said he was given an ECG monitor to wear, but was shocked to be met by three doctors when he returned to the hospital after two weeks.

"They told me I had an HCM and I could easily die at any moment if I didn't get some treatment and get it sorted out," he recalled.

"It really did shake me up and it just took me a while because ultimately I had to change my exercise, I had to go to an operation, and I had to start taking medication which then affected my heart rhythm."

The condition causes a thickening of the muscular wall of the heart which can make it harder to pump blood around the body.

He said: "Your immediate reaction is to stop doing anything because you think 'right, if I carry on exercising I'm running the risk of having a heart attack'.

"You literally stop doing all the things you love doing and then you've gradually put weight on which then makes things difficult, it's like a bit of a vicious circle."

He said the mental awareness of that was "really quite challenging" because "you can't just stop doing all the things that you love doing because you start to deteriorate even quicker".

However, he said there did come the time "where once you've got your head around it, you've just got to try and control your heart rhythm so that you don't put yourself in that risk situation but you can still manage your lifestyle to enjoy life".

"It just took me a long a long time to get over it," he said.

Although it had been tough to give up many of the activities he had enjoyed, including mountain biking, he said he had found other sports to help him manage his weight and deal with his condition, including golf and swimming.

And taking to the pool in particular has been a real benefit to both his mental and physical health.

"I was looking for a healthy way to try and lose some weight without putting my heart under too much strain," he explained.

"The swimming is brilliant because you get into a lovely rhythm and your heart sort of complements it as long as you can control your breathing, it's just such an effective way to exercise."

The father of four said it allowed him to maintain a heart rate that was "not dangerous for me but it's enough to allow me to burn calories and then lose weight".

And that realisation has led him to take on a special challenge during the month of June this year to mark the 15th anniversary of his diagnosis – swimming 3,000 lengths of a 25-metre pool during the month.

"I know in a way it doesn't sound that much," he said, "but it's absolutely huge and doing it every day is one of the hardest things.

"I decided to give myself a target of 100 lengths a day for 30 days, which actually then equated to 75km over the month."

On track to complete the distance on Tuesday, Williams is using the challenge to raise money for Craig's Heartstrong Foundation, which offers heart screening and donates defibrillators, and mental health charity Isle Listen.

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