http://www.care2.com/greenliving/are-you-about-to-have-a-heart-attack-7-little-known-signs.html
Are You About to Have A Heart Attack? 7 Little-Known Signs
By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com senior editor
By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com senior editor
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 (that’s almost 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. The reason? 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.
Next: The 7 little-known signs of heart attack
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7 comments
add your comment »holy crap! I've felt all those things, but I'm only 24. I'm a healthy weight, non smoker, healthy diet and exercise vegetarian but I ate like sh*t when I was younger. could I be at risk? I have a doctors appointment in a few days so I will definitely be bringing this article with me.
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thanks for this one. very useful.
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thanks for this kind informations.these all very usefull informations
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I have gone into the emergency room with all these signs and after even a stress test that showed I had a blockage, been told not to come back until I had pain in my chest and down my left arm, that I was wasting their time. Because they told me verbally nothing was wrong with me, I waited six months before seeing a doctor, who told me I needed an angioplasy immediately!
It's too bad doctors don't know these signs.
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To Teresa T.: I agree with your comment that doctors "think women tend to be hypocodriacs [sp.] because we actually seek medical treatment when we don't feel well; as opposed to men." This seems especially true among male doctors. Based on my experiences, female doctors tend to order more extensive testing than their male counterparts. Also, I can think of at least 4 times when my own research came up with a correct diagnosis quicker than my male doctors' did. On one of these occasions, I was wasting away from ulcerative colitis. My doctor insisted it was nothing serious until I demanded that something be done because I was dashing to the washroom 15 to 20 times per day. Then he called a specialist.
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What this article doesn't mention, but I've heard about, is that in addition to heart attack being different in women doctors tend to misdiagnose women BECAUSE their symptoms are different. I also believe they think women tend to be hypocodriacs because we actually seek medical treatment when we don't feel well; as opposed to men. I believe my biological half sister died because she sent home from the hospital ER and told it was "nothing serious". She died the following day from a heart related condition.
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This is good to know! I'll be more aware of my body from now on.
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