Decoding women’s symptoms for heart disease

Most of us are familiar with the classic risk factors for heart disease: obesity, physical inactivity, tobacco use, poor diet, alcohol abuse and so on. But the fact is that every woman – young or old, heavy or thin, smoker or non-smoker – is at risk. Understanding the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and making healthy lifestyle choices are among the most important things a woman can do to protect herself from a disease that kills one in three women every year, or approximately one woman every minute.

It’s difficult to imagine a less likely candidate for a heart attack than Laura Williamson. This 27-year-old former collegiate soccer player assumed she was in perfect health when she began experiencing pain in her right shoulder blade in May 2011. Williamson, who coaches soccer in addition to running and working out regularly, naturally assumed some sort of muscle injury was the source of the pain.

The pain fluctuated for a couple days and finally went away. But two weeks later, it returned with a vengeance. “It got worse throughout the day,” Williamson said. “I couldn’t walk 20 feet without having to stop and catch my breath.” She was working retail at the time and, feeling very fatigued, decided to leave work early.

Williamson tried to get some sleep, but the pain radiated forward and worsened significantly. Finally, around 2 a.m., she felt she “wasn’t breathing right,” so she called her parents and asked them to take her to the emergency room. There, in addition to performing an EKG and blood work, the ER staff gave her three nitroglycerin tablets, none of which had any effect.

Once in the ER, Williamson finally began exhibiting classic heart attack symptoms; she vomited, passed out and lost feeling in her arms. “Within minutes, they took me to the cath lab and did a heart cath,” she said. In recovery, her mother told her they found a clot in one of her arteries, and the artery was 100 percent blocked. “Wow, could that have caused a heart attack?” Williamson asked in amazement. That was when her mother told her that it had, in fact, done just that.

After learning that she’d had a heart attack while still only in her mid-twenties, Williamson experienced a wide range of emotions, from sadness to anger. As it turns out, the clot that blocked her artery and caused her heart attack was most likely the result of hormones from birth control pills.

Fortunately, Williamson’s story has a happy ending. “Two to three months afterward, they did an echocardiogram and a stress test, and everything was fine,” she said. She’s back to playing and coaching soccer, and she ran a half-marathon six months to the day after her heart attack. “I did not let it hinder me and used it as fuel for the re,” she said. The only lingering side effect for Williamson is one that’s more than a little understandable – she said she’s now acutely aware of her own heartbeat.

Stories like Williamson’s vividly illustrate the point that every woman is, to some degree, at risk for a heart attack.

This is why it’s crucial that women not only know the signs and symptoms of a heart attack but also understand that those signs and symptoms can be drastically different for women than for men.

While chest pain is a major symptom of a heart attack, many women never experience it. Instead, they report symptoms such as discomfort; tightness; fullness; pressure or pain that spreads to the shoulders; neck, upper back, jaw or arms; dizziness or nausea clammy sweats, heart utters or paleness; unexplained feelings of anxiety, fatigue or weakness, especially with exertion; stomach or abdominal pain; shortness of breath; and difficulty breathing. Because these don’t t the “classic” heart attack warning signs, some women delay seeking medical attention, which can cost them their lives.

If you experience these symptoms or any others that make you think you might be having a heart attack, call 911 and take an aspirin, which prevents further clotting. “As females, we tend to ignore ourselves and put everybody else rst,” said Williamson. “We have to be our own advocates and take care of ourselves.”