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Heart Disease Feature Stories Email a Friend Print Article Heart Disease Health Center Tools & ResourcesAfter a Heart Attack A Diet To Lower Cholesterol A Visual Guide to Heart Disease Test Your Cholesterol Smarts Exercising for a Healthy Heart Heart-Healthy Living With Diabetes webmd.m.share.init(); Font Size A A A webmd.m.fontSizer.init(); 6 Symptoms of Women's Heart Attacks ByLisa Fields
WebMD Feature Reviewed byBrunilda Nazario, MD

When a heart attack strikes, it doesn’t always feel the same in women as it does in men.

Women don't always get the same classic heart attack symptoms as men, such as crushing chest pain that radiates down one arm. Those heart attack symptoms can certainly happen to women, but many experience vague or even “silent” symptoms that they may miss.

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These six heart attack symptoms are common in women:

Chest pain or discomfort. Chest pain is the most common heart attack symptom, but some women may experience it differently than men. It may feel like a squeezing or fullness, and the pain can be anywhere in the chest, not just on the left side. It's usually "truly uncomfortable" during a heart attack, says cardiologist Rita Redberg, MD, director of Women’s Cardiovascular Services at the University of California, San Francisco. "It feels like a vise being tightened." Pain in your arm(s), back, neck, or jaw. This type of pain is more common in women than in men. It may confuse women who expect their pain to be focused on their chest and left arm, not their back or jaw. The pain can be gradual or sudden, and it may wax and wane before becoming intense. If you're asleep, it may wake you up. You should report any "not typical or unexplained" symptoms in any part of your body above your waist to your doctor or other health care provider, says cardiologist C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Stomach pain. Sometimes people mistake stomach pain that signals a heart attack with heartburn, the flu, or a stomach ulcer. Other times, women experience severe abdominal pressure that feels like an elephant sitting on your stomach, says cardiologist Nieca Goldberg, MD, medical director of the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. Shortness of breath, nausea, or lightheadedness. If you're having trouble breathing for no apparent reason, you could be having a heart attack, especially if you're also having one or more other symptoms. "It can feel like you have run a marathon, but you didn't make a move," Goldberg says. Sweating. Breaking out in a nervous, cold sweat is common among women who are having a heart attack. It will feel more like stress-related sweating than perspiration from exercising or spending time outside in the heat. "Get it checked out" if you don't typically sweat like that and there is no other reason for it, such as heat or hot flashes, Bairey Merz says. Fatigue. Some women who have heart attacks feel extremely tired, even if they've been sitting still for a while or haven't moved much. "Patients often complain of a tiredness in the chest," Goldberg says. "They say that they can't do simple activities, like walk to the bathroom."

Not everyone gets all of those symptoms. If you have chest discomfort, especially if you also have one or more of the other signs, call 911 immediately.

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Jan. 29, 2013 -- Older women with heart problems may be at greater risk for mental changes that are thought to signal the beginnings of a type of dementia, a new study shows.

Called vascular dementia, it is a type of mental decline that’s thought to be caused by problems in blood flow to the brain. It is believed to be different from the loss of memory and function that happens in Alzheimer’s disease, which is linked to the buildup of proteins in the brain.

The study, which is published in the journal JAMA Neurology, followed 1,450 men and women in the Rochester, Minn., area. At the start of the study, all participants, who were in their 70s and 80s, were free of memory loss or thinking difficulties. Researchers gave them tests to measure brain function every 15 months.

After about four years, 348 people in the study had developed some form of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This can include problems such as memory loss, having trouble making decisions, coming up with the right words, or navigating a familiar neighborhood.

Of those people, 94 had developed the type of mild cognitive impairment linked to vascular dementia. This type does not include memory loss, but does include the other problems such as with decision making, reasoning, and visual-spatial relations.

Heart health did seem to influence the risk of developing these types of mental changes. Even after researchers took into account other factors known to raise the risk of dementia (like family history, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and exercise) having heart problems -- including atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, and heart failure -- nearly doubled a person’s risk for developing mild cognitive impairment without memory loss.

The link was particularly strong in women. Women with heart problems were about three times more likely to develop it than women without heart concerns. The link was not significant in men.

Researchers say preventing heart disease, through regular exercise and a healthy diet, is the first step. For people who’ve already been diagnosed with heart disease, regular checkups to make sure diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol are under control may be important for brain and heart health.

“If we reduce the risk of the conditions that lead to cardiac disease, hopefully we can reduce the risk of developing MCI, and thereby reduce the risk of developing dementia,” says researcher Rosebud Roberts, MD, professor of epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

View the original article here

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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Women's Heart Attack Symptoms: 6 Possible Signs

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