Women's Health: The (Often Overlooked) Signs of A Heart Attack
Conventional wisdom has it that heart attacks come out of the blue.
We're also trained to expect a heart attack to happen a certain way: The
victim clutches his chest, writhes in pain, and collapses.
But for
women, it often doesn't happen that way.
Study after study shows heart
attacks and heart disease are under-diagnosed in women, with the
explanation being that they didn't have symptoms. But research
shows that's not the case.
Women who've had heart attacks realize,
looking back, that they experienced significant symptoms -- they just
didn't recognize them as such.
In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, and published in
Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association,
95 percent of women (nearly all!) who'd had heart attacks
reported experiencing symptoms that were decidedly new or different from
their previous experience a month or more before their attacks.
Even
when a heart attack is occurring, women are often slow to realize
what's happening and call a doctor, mainly because women's heart attack
symptoms are different than men's.
This failure to recognize heart
attack signs in women has led to a grim statistic: Women are more likely
to die from sudden cardiac death than men are, and two thirds of women
who have a heart attack don't recover completely.
To prevent a heart attack from sneaking up on you, watch for these little-known signs of heart attack:
Fatigue.
More than 70 percent of women in the NIH
study reported extreme fatigue in the month or months prior to their
heart attacks. This was not just your run-of-the-mill tiredness -- the
kind you can power through -- this was an overwhelming fatigue that
sidelined them from their usual schedules for a few days at a time.
Sleeplessness or insomnia.
Despite
their fatigue, women who've had heart attacks remember experiencing
unexplained inability to fall asleep or stay asleep during the month
before their heart attacks.
Anxiety and stress.
Stress
has long been known to up the risk of heart attack. But what women
report is the emotional experience; before their heart attacks they felt
anxious, stressed, and keyed up, noticeably more than usual.
Moments
before or during a heart attack, many women report a feeling they
describe as "impending doom;" they're aware that something's drastically
wrong and they can't cope, but they're not sure what's going on.
Indigestion or nausea.
Stomach pain, intestinal
cramps, nausea, and digestive disruptions are another sign reported by
women heart attack patients.
Become familiar with your own digestive
habits, and pay attention when anything seems out of whack. Note
especially if your system seems upset and you haven't eaten anything out
of the ordinary.
Shortness of breath.
Of the
women in the NIH study, more than 40 percent remembered experiencing
this symptom. One of the comments the women made is that they noticed
they couldn't catch their breath while walking up the stairs or doing
other daily tasks.
Flu-like symptoms.
Clammy, sweaty skin, along with feeling lightheaded and weak, can lead women to wonder if they have the flu when, in fact, they're having a heart attack.
Jaw, ear, neck, or shoulder pain.
While pain and numbness in the chest, shoulder, and arm is a common
sign of heart attack (at least, among men), women often don't experience
the pain this way.
Instead, many women say they felt pain and a
sensation of tightness running along their jaw and down the neck, and
sometimes up to the ear, as well.
The pain may extend down to the
shoulder and arm--particularly on the left side--or it may feel like a
backache or pulled muscle in the neck and back.
How to protect yourself or the women you care about
In
addition to the symptoms they do have, women differ from men in another
significant way -- they may not experience many of the symptoms we
traditionally associate with heart attacks.
This, experts say, is a
major reason why women's heart attacks go unrecognized and untreated.
Almost half of all women in the NIH study felt no chest pain, even
during the heart attack itself. Numbness is another symptom women may
not experience, experts say.
If your body is doing
unusual things and you just don't feel "right," don't wait. Go see your
doctor and ask for a thorough work-up.
And if you have any risk factors
for cardiac disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol,
smoking, or family history of heart disease, mention these to the
doctor.
Time is of the essence, so don't count on medical staff to know
your background or read your chart -- tell them your risk factors right
away, so your condition can be evaluated fully and completely.
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