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Heart Disease Community

Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

I can't say you are, something lent the possibility. My doctor thought my chest...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

" pains have not abated and have recently been coming on while sitting or standing...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

Even if the pains are in your heart muscle, it can simply be you are pushing...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

The next step in your exercise routine, which you do need to continue, is no over...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: New Stent Recipient and Scared

Thank you for the kudos. And thank you for implementing the changes you have done...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

ACerulean: This is not humoring you. If you have serious heart disease, it should...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

ACerulean:

This is not humoring you. If you have serious heart disease, it should not be overlooked because of your age. Statistically, your pains are likely anxiety. But if they are not anxiety related, there is a physical cause. With a truly horrible diet since childhood, or including it, you could have serious heart disease.

You get exercise induced pain, and it stops only when you cease exercise after the pain is there. Some chest pain can occur just from over doing exercise, and is simply getting your heart past its anaerobic threshold. I recall a "lung burning" feeling in high school when pushing myself hard in exercise.

Now that you are keeping this journal, you have something serious to discuss with your doctor. Continue to monitor and write everything.

A dull achy pain behind your sternum. That's the area of the heart. On a scale of 1 to 10, what level is the worst pain ? Can you induce it even stronger, or have you ? My very strong angina, I will say was a 10 all over my chest, not just the heart, and came from doing almost nothing.

Now that you know you can induce it, DON'T. You should feel no pain in your chest, or anywhere else really, during exercise. Find a pace just below the pain threshold, and try maintaining that, when any hint of pain comes, slow down below the pain threshold immediately. If the pain subsides right away, this might simply be normal with exercise. When pain comes, if dull, it may simply be your exercise limit. The durations you speak of do not sound beyond the norm of experience of exercise for people just beginning an exercise program.

Its less than a week. Continue monitoring and exercising. Try to stay BELOW a pain threshold. Each week, try pushing your exercise just a little further. If exercise related, you'll grow fitter, and the pain threshold will be more difficult to achieve, and may just be a normal exercise anaerobic threshold. If over weeks, it does not change, or slowly get easier to induce, then it seems more likely it may be indicative of a problem. Then you want to present and discuss this journal with your doctor.

Meanwhile, low salt, low fat diet. Reduced protein and increased fruit and vegetables. Less creamy sauces.

Its good to be concerned about your health.View Thread

Posted byDeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

Describe exactly the exercise induced chest pain. An MI, is pain that does not...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

By the way, with a careful fitness program after bypass surgery, I can enjoy...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

The doctor will argue age as making the heart cath 99% unlikely to find anything. ...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

The doctor will argue age as making the heart cath 99% unlikely to find anything.

This is where you have to be really, really realistic, and totally honest about anxiety. My doctor also told me my two initial chest pain incidents were anxiety, without even trying to determine if I was concerned enough about anything to warrant anxiety. I asked him what I was anxious about, and he said, 'I don't know, its your anxiety." No basis what so ever. He might as well have said he thought I could learn to levitate and transport myself to other planets. Same level of accuracy. I had no anxiety at the time. Its still rare, and does not bring on any chest pain. My chest pain is almost ways totally random, unless I eat food with even a normal amount of fat. That will bring on strong chest pain within 24 hours, sometimes in as little as 4 hours. In one incident, the angina lasted two hours before subsiding.

So think about the incidents of chest pain, major and minor, you have had. As many as you can recall. Write down the day, date, and time of the incident, what you had been doing near that time, or what you had been watching, thinking, or worrying about. Events like this are traumatic, so they register more strongly in our memory.

Do the same for incidents of shortness of breath (SOB). My only incidents prior to bypass surgery occurred when I had a heart valve problem occur. With one, I was constantly short of breath if I even walked for about two weeks. With the other, if I did any exercise for more than a minute. That was from an infection, and took many months to heal. These were within four years of my emergency bypass surgery. I had echo stress tests with both, and the doctors saw no hint of blockages or abnormal heart performance.

So its no surprise they gave you essentially inappropriate tests to check for blockages. They did the same for me when I was 47, and 52.

Do your journalling and analysis. If the angina or SOB has an anxiety basis, you really will be able to figure it out. If the incidents came up out of the blue while asleep or exercising, doing physical work of some kind, or involved in an intense movie or video game, or argument with someone, then in my opinion, non-medical, but of my own experience, it is not stress.

Take a week or so to CALMLY assemble your history on this. Re-read it for accuracy, as if it is another person, not you.

There are alternatives to bypass surgery for most people. One, is one or more stents, but identifying locations still requires an angiogram. The non-medical alternative involves severe lifestyle and diet changes I have mentioned and I have been living SINCE bypass surgery. But if in a life threatening situation based on severity, it can be too little too late.

At this point you need determination, not anxiety. You are now your own dispassionate caretaker. If you will die soon, its what you set yourself up for, so no point being upset about it. If you won't die soon, don't be a baby crying about nothing, or Chicken Little saying the sky is falling when it is not.

Part of the lifestyle change, is to avoid things that bring on chest pain or shortness of breath. For the first YEAR or two, that would include action movies or thrillers, intense video games, active sports, even arguments with other people.

Eating an extremely health conscious diet, heavy on dark color fruits and berries, whole grain breads and cereals, non fatty fish, no red meat. No fat on poultry, no oils or mayonaise, pistachios as nuts, a few other nuts now and then. Dark chocolate is ok. No dairy, no ice cream.

Or try some of those things, maybe they will bring on chest pain. But they may also worsen your blockages if you have any, and you won't feel it for awhile.

Do ask your doctor about your HDL and LDL numbers. You have a target to bring the ratio of those as low as you can. Mine at time of surgery was 4 to 1. Now it is 1.7. It had been 1.2 for five years.

Go change your life.View Thread

Posted byDeadManWalking57

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Reply: Heart Attack or Indigestion?

I had two stress tests in three years that also showed showed nothing, the last...

Posted by DeadManWalking57

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