HEART ATTACK Signs MOST People Overlook!

Hello Health Champions! Today we're going to talk about 10 signs of a heart attack that most people miss. And if you really understand the things we're going to talk about today, then it's very possible that you could save a life and maybe it's yours. The thing we need to understand about heart attack signs is they may not be as dramatic as what people have been led to believe. You may never end up clutching your chest. You may never feel like you have an elephant sitting on your chest and you may not end up collapsing. On top of that, there are also significant differences between men and women. And for each sign we're going to talk about what those differences are and we're going to mark them in different colors so it's easier to follow along. So first of all, what is a heart attack? It is when there is insufficient blood supply to the heart. The heart is working constantly all the time. Never takes a break. So we need to have a constant blood supply and if that's interrupted, now the heart cannot perform the job. And typically this interruption is when one of the coronary arteries, one of the arteries blood vessels that supplies blood to the heart itself gets blocked by a plaque that has ruptured. And when it ruptured, it sort of explodes and it takes up a lot of space in that coronary artery. And in severe cases, this can lead to a cardiac arrest. But these are not the same thing now. Cardiac arrest is when there's an electrical stop. We can't even make enough energy or ATP to send electrical signals. But it's not the same thing and with a heart attack, the heart is still pumping. It is still struggling and it can go on for minutes or it could go on for hours. And after about 20 to 30 minutes, then there is so much backup. There's so much lactic acid. There's so much drop in ATP that we can't maintain the proper signaling. We can't maintain the proper membrane dynamics in those cells. So now we have minerals and we have fluids leaking where they shouldn't go. And the heart is severely damaged and the longer it goes, the more severe the damage is. And as this ATP drops, we get cell death or necrosis. And the problem is that even if we survive that heart attack and start healing, those heart cells that died, they do not recover. They do not rebuild into muscle cells that can pump again. They become scar tissue. That's just hardened and inactive tissue. Sign number one is chest pressure and this is the classic sign that most people associate with a heart attack. It may be very painful or it may be more like a type of discomfort. It could be feel like indigestion and it could also feel like tightness or pressure or a heaviness on the chest. And this is where people often report. It feels like there's an elephant sitting on my chest. And this classic sign happens mostly in men, but it can also happen in women quite commonly. However, if it happens in women, then it's also often associated with other symptoms at the same time. Sign number two is shortness of breath. And this is where you feel you can't get enough air, even if you're at rest, even if you're not doing anything special. And if the heart does not get the blood supply like we just talked about, then it doesn't have the strength to pump enough blood for the rest of the body and the brain. And now those tissues are starting to demand more oxygen. They're being deprived. So the brain is signaling for the breathing to increase to try to compensate and get some more air in. And this is one of those signs that is more common in women, especially older women and especially women who have some metabolic challenge like type 2 diabetes. However, it also is common in men, but then it is typically associated with chest pain, whereas in women you wouldn't necessarily see that. Sign number three is a cold sweat or a feeling of a claminess. And this is a stress response. It's a classic stress response. So in your autonomic nervous system, you have the two branches. You have one that speeds things up and one that slows things down. And the speed up is the fight flight, the sympathetic nervous system. So when you're having this stress response, your sympathetic nervous system is increasing its activity. And you're getting into this fight flight stage. And the trigger here is pain. There can be several triggers. Pain is one of them. And another one would be less oxygen. And a third one would be less blood pressure. Because that's what happens in a fight flight. When you need to run from something, then you're increasing your sympathetic activation so that you can increase your breathing, increase your heart rate, increase your blood pressure. So that's what a stress response does. But in this case, it's not kicking in because you need to run. It's kicking in because your oxygen is dropping and your blood pressure is dropping. And this cold sweat would be extra concerning if it also happens with dizziness, nausea, or pain. And this is something that we see a lot in both men and women. So there's not really a difference on this one. Sign number four is referred pain. And this is where we're experiencing the pain in some place other than the heart. And this would be four places in particular in the arm, usually the left, in the neck, in the back, and the shoulders. And we can also experience this neck pain in the jaw. Now in women, you're going to mostly see it in the jaw and in the back. And when we say the back, it is behind the heart in between the shoulder blades, especially a little bit over on the left side. And in men, we are typically going to see it more so in the arm and in the shoulder. And typically this pain is going to be experienced as dull, heavy, or like a pressure. And the thing about this is that it could start as a chest pain and then radiate out into these different areas, or you could experience this referred pain only in the referred area and not feel anything in the heart. And the reason we can get this referred pain is that there's such an intense activity. There's such a crisis that there's so much signaling. And because of that, there's a little bit of spill over. A lot of these nerve pathways and the nerve roots, they overlap and they cross. So there, they can be a little bit of a spill. And the brain gets confused about what body part is actually signaling the pain. Sign number five is nausea, indigestion, and abdominal discomfort. So this has everything to do with the vagus nerve, which is cranial nerve number 10. So cranial nerve means that it doesn't go down into the spinal cord. It exits from some hole or foramen from the skull itself, and then it travels down. And vagus is the longest cranial nerve in the body. Vagus means wanderer. And it actually goes all the way from the skull and down to two-thirds of your intestine. So all the visceral organs are controlled by the vagus nerve. And we just talked about the autonomic nervous system with the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, the fight flight and the feed breed. Well, this portion is normally the parasympathetic outflow from the cranium. So it is what normally slows the heart down. But in addition to that, it also supplies us with digestion. So it controls the stomach, the gallbladder, the pancreas, the small intestine, and about two-thirds of the large intestine. But in this case, it's not the normal parasympathetic function that's creating these symptoms. It's the fact that there are heart cells dying. And again, I mentioned before that there's such strong activity. There's such strong signals going on that these dying heart cells are now stimulating and signaling via the vagus nerve and it gets triggered. And it's kind of the same mechanism as when you have food poisoning, for example. Then there's also very strong signaling from the stomach area that goes up backwards in the vagus nerve and that signals the nausea and the vomiting that you would get with food poisoning. But here, of course, it's not that. It is the heart cells themselves that are responsible. And this symptom is more common in women, but you can still get it as a man. And again, there's many reasons why we miss these signs. But one is that we're conditioned to look for these dramatic signs. We expect this clutching of the chest. and the collapsing, but it may not be that. But the other reasons are that sometimes we're embarrassed that if it's only in digestion, we didn't want to look silly and show up at the hospital and then they just brush it off and, "Oh, it's just another digestion." We don't want to go through that embarrassment. And the other thing is denial. We really don't want to. We so desperately wish for it to not be serious that we are getting into denial and just kind of brushing it off. Sign number six is dizziness or lightheadedness. And here, of course, it is because the heart is not pumping its usual volume of blood. So there's a decrease in oxygen supply to the brain. And the brain does not do well at all without oxygen. So now you might feel things like you are about to faint. You might just feel like your balance is a little bit off or you could feel dizzy or disoriented. And this is a little bit more common in women, especially elderly, but men also experience this commonly. And also, this is commonly mistaken for simply being dehydrated or having low blood sugar. But the thing to look for there is that with a heart attack, there would be a very, very sudden onset. It would be from one second to the next. Whereas with dehydration or blood sugar, it would be much more gradual. Sign number seven of a heart attack is fatigue. And this would not be that you're just feeling a little bit tired. It would be extreme fatigue, unusual, or sudden fatigue. Again, something that's not there one second and then it's there the next. And this extreme fatigue could be experienced from doing some very, very light activity, like putting clothes on or brushing your hair or washing your hands or something that normally would not create fatigue. And it's the type of fatigue where you feel like you can barely function that type of tired and like you may not even be able to stay awake. And it could also feel like your energy is just suddenly drained out of you. Now, this is more common in women, but not only that, sometimes it is the only symptom in women. So you may not have anything else going on. And men can still get it, but it's not as common. Sign number eight is anxiety or a panic attack. And this is very common in both men and women. And it is often misdiagnosed more so in women because it can present very, very similar to a panic attack that is not have to do with a heart attack. So we get things like chest tightness. We can have heart racing. We get sweating or a sense of dread. So this has a lot to do with the brain, obviously. And there's several things going on. So first of all, because of the low oxygen in the brain and the body, we get a fight flight response. But then the frontal cortex, which normally controls anxiety and panic attacks, it's already deprived of oxygen because it's not getting the proper blood supply. But then because of the fight flight response, there's a further reduction in blood supply to that frontal cortex. Because during a fight flight response, the blood flow is shifting away from the frontal lobe, from the executive areas down into the brainstem to the survival areas. So now we have, among other things, the amygdala, which is our fear center, basically, and part of our limbic system. And this starts to take over and along with the other lower, more primitive brain areas. And this is why with an anxiety or panic attack, whether it's due to a heart attack or not, it's not something that you can reason yourself out of, because there's just not enough blood supply to that frontal cortex. Number nine is palpitations or arrhythmias, which means that you feel really strong pounding or you feel irregular heartbeats. And when the heart is under severe stress, then that can cause some misfiring. And we experience things like heart flutter. It could skip beats or it could be racing. And we can also, of course, feel the thumps or the pounding that I mentioned. Now, it's the lack of oxygen, the lack of ATP, like I mentioned before, that is starting to affect the electrical activity, the electric signaling system of the heart. And if this is allowed to go on in severe cases, this is where we can see that cardiac arrest that we talked about earlier. Now, this is more reported in women and consequently, it is probably more ignored in men. So it probably happens to about the same degree, but men tend to be stubborn and ignore things more so than women. Shame on us. Sign number 10 is a vague feeling that something is wrong. And these are more vague and abstract when people report what they're experiencing. They could say things like, "I just didn't feel right," or they say that something was off. And they can't put their finger on it. They just knew they were something. And sometimes people report that they felt foggy, they felt detached, or like something bad was coming. And what's going on here is that your nervous system is picking up all these signals from the body, and consciously, you haven't made sense of it yet. You don't know what it means, but your body is still processing this at a subconscious level. And what's interesting is that these sensations, these feelings are often shockingly accurate. And it is more commonly reported in women, especially elderly, but also we get these reports from men who are in tune. So here's what you need to do if you or someone around you is experiencing any of these symptoms. First of all, you call 911, or whatever number is the emergency number in your country. And then do your best to stay calm and have someone else drive you. Do not get into the car because you don't know if it's going to suddenly get worse. And then I would urge you to share this video with all the people that you care about and do it before they need it. And most importantly, understand that the vast majority of heart attacks can be prevented. And I have made several hundred videos that talk about how to maintain health, how to prevent disease. So make sure that you watch several dozen or maybe a few hundred of those videos to make sure that you learn the causes and how to prevent these diseases and then make sure that you share it with the people you care about. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.