February is Heart Month! That’s a pretty good reason to remind yourself that women fare worse than men when experiencing a cardiac event. One possible reason is that it can be confusing to make sense of heart attack symptoms when they do hit. Instead of seeking immediate help for possible heart attack symptoms, we end up:
- toughing them out
- waiting to see if they go away
- blaming them on heartburn, muscle soreness, or other less serious non-cardiac causes
If the following 12 possible heart attack symptoms occur – alone or in combination, and especially if they are unusual for you – you must act immediately:
1. Anxiety: a heart attack can cause intense anxiety. Heart attack survivors often talk about having experienced an unusual “sense of impending doom” leading up their cardiac event.
2. Chest discomfort: notice the word here is ’discomfort’, not ‘pain’. Pain in the chest is the classic symptom of heart attack, but not all heart attacks cause chest pain, and not all chest pain means a heart attack. Women commonly describe their chest symptoms as tightness, fullness, burning, heaviness or pressure – NOT pain.
3. Cough: persistent coughing or wheezing can be a symptom of heart failure — a result of fluid accumulation in the lungs.
4. Dizziness: heart attacks or heart rhythm abnormalities can cause lightheadedness or loss of consciousness.
5. Fatigue: especially among women, unusual crushing fatigue can occur during a heart attack as well as in the days and weeks leading up to one.
6. Nausea or lack of appetite: it’s not uncommon for people to feel sick to their stomach or vomit during a heart attack.
7. Pain in other parts of the body: pain or discomfort can begin in the chest and spread to the shoulders, arms, elbows, upper back, neck, jaw, throat or abdomen. But 40% of women experience no chest symptoms at all, and their pain symptoms might come and go. Men often feel pain radiating down their left arm, but women are more likely to feel this in either arm or both, or between the shoulder blades.
8. Rapid or irregular pulse: there’s usually nothing worrisome about an occasional skipped heartbeat, but a rapid or irregular pulse – especially when accompanied by weakness, dizziness, or shortness of breath – can be evidence of a heart attack, heart failure, or a cardiac arrhythmia.
9. Shortness of breath: feeling winded at rest or with minimal exertion, “like you’ve just run a marathon when you haven’t even moved”, might indicate a heart attack or heart failure.
10. Sweating: Breaking out in an unusual cold clammy sweat is a common symptom of heart attack.
11. Swelling: heart failure can cause fluid to accumulate in the body. This can cause swelling (often in the feet, ankles, legs, or abdomen) as well as sudden weight gain and sometimes a loss of appetite.
12. Weakness: in the days leading up to a heart attack as well as during one, some people experience severe, unexplained weakness.
Read more about these 12 symptoms.
See also:
I never realised how stressed I was until recently, and came across your site on Google. This list is interesting and helpful. I will mark your site and come back. Thank you!!
It’s a pretty comprehensive list and has some surprises that I never actually expected to even consider as being heart-related.
This is so awesome that you are helping to raise awareness of these little-known symptoms and also other important info about women and heart attacks. Thanx!
My gosh on any given day I have 8 of these symptoms and that’s when everything is NORMAL! This list is enough for any hypochondriac to check into hospital permanently!
Thank you for this list. Its so important to remember that the “HollyWood Heart AttacK” may not represent the reality for many women.
My own heart attack last summer was preceded by upper back pain ONLY. No chest pain, no discomfort, nothing but what I assumed was a sprained muscle while gardening. Thank goodness I listened to my sister who demanded that I call 911 when this “sprain” begain to get worse and worse over a few days.
I cannot say this strongly enough: CALL 911 when you experience symptoms that are unusual or weird FOR YOU.
Nicely done, Sis!