The signs of heart attack in women can easily be subtle and seemingly totally unrelated.
Sue Palmer woke up vomiting and did exactly what most of would certainly do: She tried to shake it off and go spine to bed. But, in an essay Palmer wrote for The Washington Post, the Nashville-based attorney details exactly how her husband Tim insisted that she visit the ER…and saved her life in the process.
“He whispered, ‘Let’s visit the emergency room,’” Palmer recalled. “‘Why?’ I asked. He replied, ‘You could be having a heart attack.’”
Palmer recounts exactly how she joked regarding the situation to ER workers, because she felt fine, and even rolled her eyes at the notion that she could be having a heart attack at one point. While one electrocardiogram (EKG) didn’t reveal that anything was off, a second found that something was quite wrong.
She was rushed to an operating room then was put under. As quickly as she awoke, she learned that she had had a significant heart attack and joined the process of having it As quickly as she arrived at the hospital. Her right coronary artery was 100 percent blocked and the focus artery was 70 percent blocked (a problem she says doctors refer to as “the widowmaker” due to the fact that it’s the most regular source of sudden death), Yet doctors had been able to protect against the heart attack in its tracks.
“If I had gone spine to sleep that morning, as I had wanted to, I might not have actually awakened, and if I did, there probably would certainly have actually been devastating damage to my heart,” Palmer wrote. “As it was, I had no damage.”
According to the Centers for Ailment Manage and Prevention, heart Ailment is the leading killer of women in the U.S., responsible for one from every four female deaths in 2009 (the current year for which data is available). Even scarier: Almost two-thirds of women that die suddenly of coronary heart Ailment have actually no previous symptoms.
Most of us tend to believe of heart attack symptoms as experiencing chest pains or pain in your arm. Yet while experts say women can easily experience those symptoms, we’re likewise prone to much less obvious markers of a heart attack—and it’s necessary to be aware of them.
Related: 4 Points You’re Already Performing To Protect Your Heart—Free of Even Realizing It
“The symptoms in women vs. men are a lot much less dramatic,” says George S. Abela, M.D., chief of the division of cardiology at Michigan State University. “That’s portion of the issue that leads numerous women to forget about their symptoms or not realize that this might be a heart attack.”
“There’s no Actual good anatomic basis for it, Yet it happens all of the time,” says Nicole Weinberg, M.D., a cardiologist at Providence Saint John’s Healthiness focus in Santa Monica, Calif. “Rather a lot if anyone is having some sort of unusual symptom between their chin and belly button you have actually to pay attention.”
Weinberg has actually seen a female patient whose heart attack presented itself as spine pain that came on suddenly and escalated throughout the day. Yet another had several teeth removed after suffering jaw pain, only to understand that the pain was because of a heart attack that she eventually experienced.
Weinberg calls vomiting enjoy Palmer endured “common” for women, adding that individuals frequently confuse it Along with meals poisoning or various other gastrointestinal issues. Unusual sweating that comes on suddenly and nausea are various other a lot more surprising symptoms, she says.
But Sharonne Hayes, M.D., a cardiologist and founder of the Mayo Clinic’s Women’s Heart Clinic, says that the most common symptom of a heart attack for the two men and women is chest discomfort. “Not pain, due to the fact that it isn’t constantly pain,” she says. “It can easily be pressure.”
She likewise adds “profound fatigue that you don’t normally feel” to the list of a lot more common (Yet seemingly unrelated symptoms).
Abela admits that it’s “sometimes hard to decide on up on these symptoms” because they can easily easily be confused Along with various other ailments or just shaken off. Yet if you experience these symptoms or merely feel enjoy something is not fairly right, experts say you must call your doctor or have actually a person drive you to the ER—especially if the symptoms get hold of worse Along with exercise. It might be nothing, Yet after that again, it could be.
Keep this in mind, too: Hayes cites data that found that, while women pay focus to heart attack symptoms in others and will certainly call 911 due to them, they tend to brush those exact same symptoms off As quickly as they actually experience them themselves.
Once you make it to the ER, Hayes says it’s perfectly acceptable to say you believe you could be having a heart attack—especially if you believe you’re not being taken seriously. “It might make doctors consider something they haven’t believed of,” she says. “At the quite least, the standard of care would certainly be an electrocardiogram.”
Unfortunately, Weinberg says this type of thing can easily happen to anyone. “You could be perfectly healthy and balanced and have actually something enjoy that happen,” she says. “It doesn’t have actually to be an over weight smoker that eats McDonald’s every day.”