Symptoms of Heart Problems

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Heart attack, coronary artery disease or any other type of heart disease has different symptoms, even though several heart problems have similar warning signs. The symptoms of heart problem you experience depend on the type and severity of the condition of your heart. Always learn to identify your symptoms and the situations that cause them.

Coronary Artery Disease

The most frequent symptom of coronary artery disease is angina or chest pain. Angina could be described as a heaviness, pressure, discomfort, aching, burning, squeezing, fullness or painful feeling in your chest. It could be mistaken for heartburn or indigestion. Angina is generally felt in the chest, but might be also felt in the arms, shoulders, neck, throat, back or jaw.

Other symptoms of coronary artery disease include:

• Shortness of breath, faster heartbeat, dizziness or weakness
• Nausea, sweating
• Palpitations (irregular heartbeats)

Angina Pectoris or Angina

Angina pectoris is a predecessor to heart attack. Usually, during physical exertion, stress or an emotionally charged situation, in cold weather or after a heavy meal, the heart beats faster. Heart requires more blood flow with oxygen to the heart muscle to sustain the beating. However, if the channels by which the oxygen and blood flow to the heart are narrowed, not enough nutrients get to the heart muscle tissue. As a result, it suffers oxygen shortage and the heart tells you about this with a pain known as angina pectoris.

The pain is quite distinct and is described as a heavy, strangulating, suffocating experience far more powerful than anything like indigestion, chest wall injuries, spasms or pleurisy of the throat.

The pain may seem to begin under the breastbone on the left side of the chest and at times spreads out to other places like throat, neck, jaw, left shoulder and arm and occasionally on to the right side.

Angina is a frightening, intense episode, but with calm and rest these attacks generally go away in about 10 to 20 minutes. If they last for a long time, then you need to go to the hospital and have a systematic check up. Heart attacks could occur due to long lasting angina attacks.

Symptoms

Dizziness could be an early symptoms of heart problem, mainly an attack. Cardiac chest pain is often unclear or dull or could be described as a pressure or band like feeling, heaviness, squeezing or other discomfort. Heart attacks usually occur from 4 am to 10 am due to higher adrenaline amounts released from the adrenal glands during the morning hours. Increased adrenaline in the blood stream could add to the break of the plaque that causes the formation of the clot and ultimately an attack.

The typical symptoms of heart attack are alike to those of angina, but more serious and longer lasting. The sufferer feels a pain that is normally burning or squeezing or feels an awful pressure in the middle of the chest. Weakness, sweating and shortness of breath frequently go with the pain of a heart attack. If you have chest pain which lasts more than 20 minutes and is not relieved by rest, get abrupt medical attention.

Several of the symptoms of heart problems could be brought on by digestive turbulence or other less serious conditions. Only sophisticated medical tests can determine for certain if you’re having an attack.