Connections Between Shoulder Pain And Heart Attack
Discomfort from a heart attack can cause chest pain or even shoulder pain. So if you are experiencing shoulder or arm pain on the left side, you may be having a heart attack. However, Heart attack is not the only cause of these types of pain. So it is important to be aware of different body pains that can be indications of heart attacks.
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Strong Indicators of a Heart Attack |
Weak Indicators of a Heart Attack |
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Burning, squeezing, tightness, pressure or pain sensation |
Knifelike or sharp pain felt when coughing or sneezing |
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Gradual increase of pain over a few minutes |
Pain concentrated on one point. |
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Pain in the diffuse area, including middle of chest |
Pain occurring distinctly on one side of the body |
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Pain extending to back, jaw, neck, and left arm |
Abrupt stubbing pain that lasts for a very short moment |
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Pressure or pain accompanied by other symptoms like sudden nausea, cold sweat, problems breathing |
Pain lasting for days or hours without any other symptoms |
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Pressure or pain that is felt during emotional stress or physical exertion or when you are resting |
Pain caused by pressing the chest or body movement |
What Are The Symptoms Of Heart Attack
The major symptoms of a heart attack are
- Chest pain or discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center or left side of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or that goes away and comes back. The discomfort can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain.
- Feeling weak, light-headed, or faint. You may also break out into a cold sweat.
- Pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, or back.
- Pain or discomfort in one or both arms or shoulders.
- Shortness of breath. This often comes along with chest discomfort, but shortness of breath also can happen before chest discomfort.
Other symptoms of a heart attack could include unusual or unexplained tiredness and nausea or vomiting. Women are more likely to have these other symptoms. Learn more about women and heart disease.
Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a heart attack.1Learn more facts about heart attack and heart disease.
Do Women Have As Many Heart Attacks As Men
Coronary heart disease kills more than twice as many women as breast cancer in the UK every year, and it was the single biggest killer of women worldwide in 2019. Despite this, its often considered a mans disease.There are more than 800,000 women in the UK living with CHD, which is the main cause of heart attacks.
Each year more than 30,000 women are admitted to hospital in the UK due to a heart attack.
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Why Are Arm Pain And Heart Attack Connected
Most often a heart attack occurs when a obstructs blood flow into your heart muscle . This commonly causes a cramping or squeezing pain in the center or right side of your chest. Heart attack symptoms are extremely variable, but sometimes the pain in your chest extends to one or both shoulders and arms.
In addition to shoulder and , you may also have , aching or discomfort in other areas of your upper body, such as your neck, jaw or back, without any chest pain. This happens more commonly in women than in men.
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Tips To Determine If The Left Arm Pain Is Heart Related
Your left arm can hurt for a number of reasons including overstrain or even injury, so how can you tell when it is related to the heart? The below tips will help you distinguish regular left arm pain and heart-related left arm pain.
Evaluate the quality of your pain: Pain will feel like pressure or squeezing in the chest, and vary in intensity. If this pain then moves to the left arm, that indicates it is a heart-related left arm pain.
Look for non-pain-related symptoms: Left arm pain that exists on its own is rarely caused by the heart. Looking for other non-pain-related symptoms can help you better determine if you are about to have a heart attack. These symptoms include nausea, lightheadedness or dizziness, cold sweating, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. If these non-pain symptoms coexist with your pain, you need to contact a doctor immediately.
Evaluating your pain: When evaluating your pain, its important to first note the duration of the pain. If the pain only lasts for a few seconds, it is quite unlikely that it is caused by the heart. If pain is persistent, lasting days or weeks, that is also an unlikely indicator of heart-related pain. Pain related to a heart attack will last for a few minutes or hours, and it may also reoccur in short intervals. Lastly, if pain in the left arm occurs only when you use the arm for physical activity, it is due to muscle issues, not heart.
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Angina And Heart Attacks
Angina is a syndrome caused by the supply of oxygen-rich blood to the heart becoming restricted.
People with angina can experience similar symptoms to a heart attack, but they usually happen during exercise and pass within a few minutes.
However, occasionally, people with angina can have a heart attack. It’s important to recognise the difference between the symptoms of angina and those of a heart attack. The best way to do this is to remember that the symptoms of angina can be controlled with medicine, but symptoms of a heart attack cannot.
If you have angina, you may have been prescribed medicine that improves your symptoms within 5 minutes. If the first dose does not work, a second dose can be taken after 5 minutes, and a third dose after a further 5 minutes.
If the pain persists, despite taking 3 doses of glyceryl trinitrate over 15 minutes, call 999 and ask for an ambulance.
Page last reviewed: 28 November 2019 Next review due: 28 November 2022
Pain You Cant Put A Finger On
Aches and pains that wonât go away could be a symptom of depression or anxiety.
It may be hard to pin down exactly what hurts, but the pain is real. Mood disorders can cause pain in your:
Kelly Gregory, Hendersonville, TN.
Pam R. Taub, MD, associate professor of medicine, University of California San Diego.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: âWhat Are the Signs and Symptoms of Coronary Heart Disease?â
Gretchen E. Tietjen, MD, chairwoman of neurology and director, Headache Treatment and Research Program, University of Toledo Medical Center, Toledo, OH.
New York State Department of Health: âTypes of Strokes.â
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: âLow Back Pain Fact Sheet.â
American Family Physician: âAcute Appendicitis: Review and Update.â
American Academy of Family Physicians: âAbdominal Pain, Short Term,â âDeep Vein Thrombosis.â
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases: âDiabetic Neuropathies: The Nerve Damage of Diabetes.â
Deborah Wexler, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School co-clinical director, Massachusetts General Hospital Diabetes Center associate program director for clinical research, internal medicine residency program, Mass General, Boston.
Mental Health America: âDepression.â
Trivedi, M. The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published online 2004.
Christine Penguino, Atlanta.
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What Are The Risk Factors For Heart Attack
Several health conditions, your lifestyle, and your age and family history can increase your risk for heart disease and heart attack. These are called risk factors. About half of all Americans have at least one of the three key risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and smoking.2
Some risk factors cannot be controlled, such as your age or family history. But you can take steps to lower your risk by changing the factors you can control.
Learn more about risk factors for heart disease and heart attack.
Why Do You Get Arm Pain With Heart Attack
The association between a heart attack and arm pain may appear to be strange since the arm has not been injured. The reason for the pain in the arm is that the nerves that carry signals from the heart to the brain and those that do the same thing for the arm both send their signals to the same brain cells.
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What Causes Pain In The Left Arm
The reason that a heart attack can cause pain along your arm has to do with the circulation being reduced or cut off. Consequently, several conditions capable of affecting blood flow can also produce the same symptoms. Here are some causes of arm pain.
- Heart Attack: Letâs get this out of the way first. A heart attack happens when something is depriving the heart muscles of oxygen and heart tissue has begun to die. The cause can be a blood clot, arterial constriction, blood pressure, or other sources. Aside from left arm pain, the symptoms of a heart attack include chest pain that can radiate to the back, jaw, or throat, plus sweating, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. Not all of these symptoms will be displayed during every instance of a heart attack, and some heart attacks occur without any symptoms at all.
- Stress: A panic attack actually has many overlapping symptoms with a heart attack. When experiencing high levels of stress, you may possibly experience sweating, palpitations, a feeling of a heavy chest, and pain down the left arm. In addition to a panic attack, chronic stress is also capable of producing a repeated, throbbing pain in the arm.
- Angina: This is a form of chest pain brought on by low circulation and is associated with various coronary artery diseases. The pain in the chest can be felt as a pressure, burning, aching, squeezing, heavy, or sharp sensation and is capable of radiating into the left shoulder, arm, neck, back, and abdomen.
Heart Attack Warning Signs And Symptoms: Chest Head Jaw And Tooth Pain
Chest discomfort, manifest as pain, fullness, and/or squeezing sensation of the chest
Chest pain is the hallmark symptom of a heart attack, although it can take many different forms. In other cases, chest pain may not occur at all. The characteristic chest pain of a heart attack has been described as a sense of pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain that starts in the center of the chest. The pain or discomfort typically lasts more than a few minutes, or it may go away and then return. It can spread down the arms, to the back, or to the head and neck. Both women and men report chest pain as a primary symptom of heart attack, but women more often than men are likely to have some of the other symptoms, such as nausea, jaw pain, or shortness of breath, that are described below.
Jaw pain, toothache, headache
The pain of a heart attack can spread down both arms, to the jaw or head, or to the back. Some people report tooth pain or headache as a symptom of a heart attack. It is possible to have these types of pain without chest pain during a heart attack.
Shortness of breath
Feeling short of breath or like you are gasping for air is a common symptom of a heart attack. Shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing, is medically known as dyspnea. Shortness of breath may occur before or during the chest pain of a heart attack, and in some cases, it may be associated with other heart attack symptoms without any chest pain.
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What Are The Warning Signs Of A Heart Attack
There are several different warning signs of a heart attack, and they are not always sudden or severe. Whether or not your chest pain symptoms include mild to severe pain, they should be considered heart-related until proven otherwise.
People having a heart attack may have just one of these symptoms, or a combination of several. They can come on suddenly or develop over a few minutes and get progressively worse. Symptoms usually last for at least 10 minutes.
Warning signs could include:
- discomfort or pain in the centre of your chest a heaviness, tightness or pressure, like something heavy sitting on your chest, or a belt tightening around your chest, or a bad case of indigestion
- discomfort in your arms, shoulder, neck, jaw or back
- other problems such as:
- feeling dizzy or light-headed
Heart attacks are more common in older people than in younger people, but they can occur in people of any age.
The pain you have may not sound like that described above, but its still important to see a doctor. Remember, all chest pain should be checked out by a doctor as soon as possible.
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Vascular Thoracic Outlet Syndrome
This is a condition in which blood vessels under the collarbone are compressed due to trauma or repetitive injury. If left untreated, it can lead to progressive nerve damage.
Vascular thoracic outlet syndrome may cause numbness, tingling, and weakness of your arm. In some cases, your arm can swell. Other signs include discoloration of the hand, cold hand or arm, and a weak pulse in the arm.
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Symptoms Can Be Different For Men And Women
Men and women experience heart attack symptoms in slightly different ways. The main difference is how pain radiates.
- For men: Pain will spread to the left shoulder, down the left arm or up to the chin.
- For women: Pain can be much more subtle. It may travel to the left or right arm, up to the chin, shoulder blades and upper back or to abdomen . Women are also more likely to experience these accompanying symptoms: shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and back or jaw pain. Read an in-depth overview of heart attack symptoms for women here.
Some heart attacks are sudden and intense, but most start slowly with mild pain and discomfort. Surviving a heart attack depends upon how well you recognize and react to these symptoms. Remember that “time is muscle.” The sooner you receive medical care, the sooner heart muscle can be saved.
Symptoms Of A Heart Attack
Symptoms of a heart attack can include:
- chest pain a feeling of pressure, heaviness, tightness or squeezing across your chest
- pain in other parts of the body it can feel as if the pain is spreading from your chest to your arms , jaw, neck, back and tummy
- feeling lightheaded or dizzy
- feeling sick or being sick
- an overwhelming feeling of anxiety
- coughing or wheezing
The chest pain is often severe, but some people may only experience minor pain, similar to indigestion.
While the most common symptom in both men and women is chest pain, women are more likely to have other symptoms such as shortness of breath, feeling or being sick and back or jaw pain.
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When Chest Pains Are Serious
Unlike an achy knee or crabby lower back, chest pain isn’t something to shrug off until tomorrow. It also isn’t something to diagnose at home. Don’t play doctor go see one, fast, if you are worried about pain or discomfort in your chest, upper back, left arm, or jaw or suddenly faint or develop a cold sweat, nausea, or vomiting. Call 911 or your local emergency number to summon an emergency medical crew. It will whisk you to the hospital in a vehicle full of equipment that can start the diagnosis and keep you stable if your heart really is in trouble.
There are oh-so-many reasons to delay calling for help.
- I’m too young .
- I’m in great shape .
- I have a family to take care of .
- I don’t want to bother anyone .
Symptoms And Getting Help For A Heart Attack
A heart attack usually causes severe pain in the centre of the chest. The pain usually feels like a heaviness or tightness, which may also spread to the arms, neck, jaw, back or stomach. The pain may affect only the neck, jaw, arms or stomach. A person having a heart attack may also sweat, feel light-headed, feel sick, or be short of breath or have an overwhelming feeling of anxiety.
Many of the people we interviewed had severe chest pain which spread to their arm, and they called 999 for an ambulance or they called their GP.
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Fractured Or Broken Bone
Despite pain, sometimes theres no outward sign that youve fractured or broken a bone in your arm or wrist.
A broken bone in your arm, wrist, or hand can cause pain that gets worse when you move. Other symptoms include swelling and numbness. Its possible to have a bone fracture or break in your arm or wrist even though your arm appears normal.
Waiting For An Ambulance
If you have had a heart attack, it’s important that you rest while you wait for an ambulance, to avoid unnecessary strain on your heart.
If aspirin is available and you are not allergic to it, slowly chew and then swallow an adult-size tablet while you wait for the ambulance.
Aspirin helps to thin your blood and improve blood flow to your heart.
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Your Feet Are Swollen
Are your feet, ankles, or legs swollen? Heart failure can lead to swelling because of how it impacts your kidneys.
Heart failure can mean your kidneys dont have enough oxygen, explains Dr. Waggoner. Without enough oxygen, the kidneys cant filter your blood as well. This causes your body to hang on to extra fluid and salt. Also, as your heart fails as a pump, fluid and pressure can build up behind the heart, causing more swelling
If you notice your feet are bigger than normal, talk to your doctor. It could mean your hearts pumping ability is not working well.