Life
Heart attack symptoms you should not ignore
Here are some symptoms of heart attack you should not ignore.
Indigestion or nausea
One of the most often overlooked signs of a heart attack is nausea and stomach pain. Symptoms can range from mild indigestion to severe nausea, cramping, and vomiting. Others experience a cramping-style ache in the upper belly.
Women and adults over age 60 are more likely to experience this symptom and not recognise it as tied to cardiac health.
Most cases of stomach ache and nausea are not caused by a heart attack, of course.
But watch out for this sign by becoming familiar with your own digestive habits; pay attention when anything seems out of the ordinary, particularly if it comes on suddenly and you haven’t been exposed to stomach flu and haven’t eaten anything out of the ordinary.
Jaw, ear, neck, or shoulder pain
A sharp pain and numbness in the chest, shoulder, and arm is an indicator of heart attack, but many people do not experience heart attack pain this way at all. Instead, they may feel pain in the neck or shoulder area, or it may feel like it’s running along the jaw and up by the ear. Some women specifically report feeling the pain between their shoulder blades.
A telltale sign: The pain comes and goes, rather than persisting unrelieved, as a pulled muscle would.
This can make the pain both easy to overlook and difficult to pinpoint. You may notice pain in your neck one day, none the next day, then after that it might have moved to your ear and jaw.
If you notice pain that seems to move or radiate upwards and out, this is important to bring to your doctor’s attention.
Rapid pulse or heart rate
One little-known symptom that sometimes predates a heart attack is known as ventricular tachycardia, more commonly described as rapid and irregular pulse and heart rate.
During these episodes, which come on suddenly, you feel as if your heart is beating very fast and hard, like you just ran up a hill – except that you have not.
“I’d look down and I could actually see my heart pounding,” one person recalled. It can last just a few seconds or longer; if longer, you may also notice dizziness and weakness.
Some patients confuse these episodes with panic attacks. Rapid pulse and heartbeat that aren’t brought on by exertion always signal an issue to bring to your doctor’s attention.
Heart attacks in older patients, can mimic many other conditions. But an overall theme heard from those whose loved ones suffered heart attacks is that in the days leading up to and after a cardiac event, they “just didn’t seem like themselves.”
A good rule of thumb, experts say, is to watch for clusters of symptoms that come on all at once and aren’t typical of your normal experience. For example, a normally alert, energetic person suddenly begins to have muddled thinking, memory loss, deep fatigue, and a sense of being “out of it.”
The underlying cause could be something as simple as a urinary tract infection, but it could also be a heart attack.
If your body is doing unusual things and you just don’t feel “right,” don’t wait. See a doctor and ask for a thorough check-up.
Flu-like symptoms
Clammy, sweaty skin, along with feeling light-headed, fatigued, and weak, leads some people to believe they are coming down with the flu when, in fact, they are having a heart attack. Even the feeling of heaviness or pressure in the chest – typical of some people’s experience in a heart attack – may be confused with having a chest cold or the flu.
If you experience severe flu-like symptoms that don’t quite add up to the flu (no high temperature, for example), call your doctor to talk it over.
Watch out also for persistent wheezing or chronic coughing that does not resolve itself; that can be a sign of heart disease, experts say. Patients sometimes attribute these symptoms to a cold or flu, asthma, or lung disease when what’s happening is that poor circulation is causing fluid to accumulate in the lungs.
Breathlessness and dizziness
When your heart is not getting enough blood, it also is not getting enough oxygen. And when there isn’t enough oxygen circulating in your blood, the result is feeling unable to draw a deep, satisfying breath – the same feeling you get when you’re at high elevation, like when you are climbing a mountain. Additional symptoms can be light-headedness and dizziness.
But sadly, people don’t attribute this symptom to heart disease, because they associate breathing with the lungs, not the heart.
A common description of the feeling was: “I couldn’t catch my breath while walking up the stairs.”
Leg swelling or pain
When the heart muscle is not functioning properly, waste products are not carried away from tissues by the blood, and the result can be oedema, or swelling caused by fluid retention.
Oedema usually starts in the feet, ankles, and legs because they’re furthest from the heart, where circulation is poorer. Bring any swelling and pain to the attention of your doctor.
Sleeplessness, insomnia, and anxiety
This is an odd one that doctors cannot yet explain.
Those who have had heart attacks often remember experiencing a sudden, unexplained inability to fall asleep or stay asleep during the month or weeks before their heart attack. (Note: If you already experience insomnia regularly, this symptom can be hard to distinguish.)
Sexual dysfunction
Having trouble achieving or keeping erections is common in men with coronary artery disease, but they may not make the connection. Just as arteries around the heart can narrow and harden, so can those that supply the penis – and because those arteries are smaller, they may show damage sooner.
One survey of European men being treated for cardiovascular disease found that two out of three had suffered from erectile dysfunction before they were ever diagnosed with heart trouble.
Exhaustion or fatigue
A sense of crushing fatigue that lasts for several days is another sign of heart trouble that’s all too often overlooked or explained away. Women, in particular, often look back after a heart attack and mention this symptom.
Many women report extreme fatigue in the weeks or months prior to their heart attack.
The key here is that the fatigue is unusually strong – not the kind of tiredness you can power through but the kind that lays you flat out in bed. If you’re normally a fairly energetic person and suddenly feel sidelined by fatigue, a call to your doctor is in order.