The signs of a heart attack can be subtle. Remember my friend who didn’t realize he had a heart attack? Not everyone experiences the same symptoms in the same way when they’re having a heart attack.
Knowing yourself is a great way to start. Are you familiar with your risk factors? Have you had your cholesterol levels and blood pressure tested within the last year? If you aren’t at high risk for a heart attack, that chest pain might be gas or heartburn. That pain in your arm might be from rearranging the furniture. But if you are at risk, those signals might be cause for a call to the doctor.
Regular exercise is a great way to know how your heart and body work — you might just be able to recognize the difference between normal pain and other symptoms and dangerous health issues.
Here are three things cardiologists say you shouldn’t ignore when it comes to your heart:
- Chest pain that lasts. Brief bursts of pain are often NOT caused by heart disease. Pay attention to pain that comes on slowly and sticks around for minutes or more.
- Varied shortness of breath. Breathing problems (especially shortness of breath) often show up as a side effect of stress — and they’re relatively constant. When you’re fine one day and short of breath the next, that’s more of a reason to worry, according to some cardiologists.
- Pain you’ve never had before. If you have pain in your upper body that you’ve never had before, it may be heart-related. Coronary pain can travel through the nerves to the left arm and up into the jaw. Some heart attack patients don’t experience discomfort in the “classic” places — pain may show up anywhere in the upper torso.
If you have any questions or concerns about pain or other symptoms, call your health care provider. Better safe than sorry, right?