You’ve probably heard that a heart attack announces itself with crushing chest pain, the kind that drops a man to his knees in the movies. But that script doesn’t match what many women actually experience. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, heart attacks usually don’t look like the sudden, dramatic events you see on screen, and women are somewhat less likely than men to have chest pain at all.
If you’re waiting for your chest to seize up before you take symptoms seriously, you could be missing the actual signal your body is sending you. Heart Disease in Women | MedlinePlus
Why Shortness of Breath and Nausea Matter So Much
The Office on Women’s Health notes that while chest and upper-body pain are the most common heart attack symptoms for both sexes, shortness of breath and nausea show up more often in women than in men, according to womenshealth.gov. MedlinePlus adds that shortness of breath can sometimes be your only symptom, arriving before or during any chest discomfort, and it can happen even while you’re resting or doing something as mild as climbing a few stairs, per MedlinePlus. That same source points out women are also more likely to feel tired for no clear reason, which is easy to brush off as a bad week rather than a warning sign.
The Heart Problems That Hit Women More Than Men
Some heart conditions are simply more common in women and don’t follow the classic blocked-artery script. MedlinePlus describes coronary microvascular disease, where spasms in the smallest arteries of the heart pinch off blood flow, often during rest or routine activity rather than exertion, according to MedlinePlus. There’s also broken heart syndrome, triggered by intense emotional stress like grief or shock, which can mimic a heart attack and mostly affects women after menopause. Coronary microvascular disease can be harder to diagnose because blockages in small arteries can be harder to see on imaging tests, MedlinePlus notes.
What Chest Discomfort Can Actually Feel Like
When chest symptoms do show up, they don’t always feel like pain. MedlinePlus explains that chest discomfort during a heart attack can feel like pressure, squeezing, fullness, or even heartburn and indigestion, and it may fade and return rather than staying constant, according to MedlinePlus. Women may also notice pressure or tightness rather than sharp pain, along with discomfort in the upper back, arms, neck, jaw, or throat, dizziness, stomach pain, or unusual fatigue, per MedlinePlus. Separately, MedlinePlus notes that chest pain combined with nausea, sweating, dizziness, or shortness of breath calls for immediate medical care, regardless of the cause, according to MedlinePlus.
Why Diagnosis Can Be Delayed
Part of the danger is that women are more likely than men to have what MedlinePlus calls “silent” heart disease, with few or no obvious symptoms, and health care providers may not recognize heart disease in women because their symptoms differ from men’s, according to MedlinePlus. The Office on Women’s Health adds that in every age group, women fare worse than men after a heart attack, and those between 45 and 65 are more likely than men the same age to die within a year of one, per womenshealth.gov. On top of that, women are more likely to have a type of plaque that forms a thin, smooth layer over the arteries instead of obvious lumps, which standard angiograms often miss entirely, per the same source.
None of this means every twinge of nausea or breathlessness is a cardiac event. But if you think you may be having a heart attack, call 911 rather than driving yourself to the hospital, as the Office on Women’s Health advises. Getting treatment quickly can help prevent or limit damage to the heart muscle. Heart attack and women
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