If you want to live a long and healthy life, Valentines Day and Heart Health month is a great reminder to protect your heart. Heart attack is the most common cause of death in women, and one of the most preventable causes. But many women don’t realize that women usually have different symptoms of a heart attack than men do.
Sure, some women experience the crushing chest pain that shoots down the left arm just like most men do. But most of the time, women’s symptoms are quite different. And for women, the aftermath is much more serious; women who have a heart attack are much more likely to die within a year than men and they don’t respond as well to drugs that break up blood clots or to heart-related medical procedures.
The symptoms of a heart attack are subtler in women and many times women with an approaching heart attack are sent away from emergency rooms because their symptoms could easily be mistaken for the flu, indigestion or just fatigue. So be on the lookout for these 7 symptoms of Heart Attack in Women.
| One Month Before a Heart Attack | During a Heart Attack |
| Unusual fatigue (71%) | Shortness of breath (58%) |
| Sleep disturbance (48%) | Weakness (55%) |
| Shortness of breath (42%) | Unusual fatigue (43%) |
| Indigestion (39%) | Cold sweat (39%) |
| Anxiety (36%) | Dizziness (39%) |
| Heart racing (27%) | Nausea (36%) |
| Arms weak/heavy (25%) | Arms weak/heavy (35% |
| Source: Circulation 2003, Vol. 108, p. 2621 |
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Heart attack is much more common in women with early menopause who do not take estrogen or use other methods to protect their heart. The most important thing to remember is if something really feels different, trust your body to be giving you some important information. The reason women’s symptoms are so different from those in men is because in general, men tend to get heart disease in the large arteries of their heart while women tend to get heart disease in the smaller arteries of their heart.
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