Aortic valve stenosis

The aortic valve is like the main doorway in your heart. It's attached to your heart's main pump, and leads to a large artery which, in turn, leads to all your other arteries. How it works is this. Your main heart pump pumps the strong, oxygen-rich blood, your aortic valve opens and lets the blood through, and then quickly shuts in order to keep the blood from seeping back. You don't want your blood to seep back, because your heart doesn't want it.
When your heart is beating normally, and the aortic valve is allowing the normal amount of blood through, then your body, at least insofar as your heart goes, is operating in fine condition: you feel energetic, enthusiastic, alive.

But thing can go wrong. In this case, the case of aortic valve stenosis, your aortic valve has narrowed. In other words, the door has gotten smaller. It won't allow the same amount of blood through as it used to. Your heart's main pump doesn't like this. Your heart will adapt, of course, to the new situation, and work all the harder to keep you alive and active, but it can't keep this up forever.
Your heart is like any other hardworking, complicated machine: it abides by certain rules and regulations, and doesn't care for surprises and shocks. It's a smooth-running, smooth-flowing system, and when something impedes it, it reacts unhappily.
In the case of aortic valve stenosis, when that valve narrows, your heart reacts by growing larger to deal with the excess of blood. Again, though, it's not something it can just keep doing and doing and doing without serious consequences.
There are various reasons that you might be suffering from aortic valve stenosis. Males, for example, are more likely to get aortic heart stenosis than females. You might have it just because you're a male. Smokers increase their chances of getting aortic valve stenosis, and people who eat unhealthily, that is, who eat a lot of high fat foods. A lot of the behaviors that result in heart disease will result in aortic heart stenosis. Fatty, greasy foods build up fatty deposits in the arteries, which block the flow of blood. The same thing could be happening in your heart.
There's also a certain birth defect that results in aortic valve stenosis.A child can be born with an aortic valve that has two flaps instead of three, forcing the valve to overcompensate by enlarging.
Also, those who suffer from rheumatic fever (usually associated with the stress virus) while still young can get aortic valve stenosis later on in life.
Aortic valve stenosis can be a slow, gradual process. You may not know you have it for a long, long time. But then you'll start to notice little changes as your heart begins to wear down from working so hard for so long. Symptoms of aortic valve stenosis include weariness, listlessness, difficulty breathing. You may feel faint, you may grow dizzy, you may even lose consciousness. You may feel chest pain: you may feel a burning or a choking or a sensation as if your heart is being squeezed. You may experience irregular heartbeat, or a sudden fluttering in your heart, as if your heart is skipping a beat from time to time.
For these reasons, it is important that you see your doctor as often as possible, and especially if you're suffering from the symptoms described above. Your doctor can listen to your heart for irregularities, and even take pictures with a special camera of your valves. In that way he or she will know the extent of your problem and what to do about it.