According to the British Heart Foundation, coronary heart disease (CHD), the main cause of heart attacks, 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.
In fact, each year more than 30,000 women are admitted to hospital in the UK due to a heart attack, and research suggests that survival rates are lower for women than for men.
This could be in part due to how the pain is experienced, and our assumptions about what heart attack pain is supposed to feel like.
According to the Heart Research Institute UK: “Women often describe heart attack pain as pressure or tightness in the chest, and not the severe pain often felt by men.”
So, what are the symptoms of a heart attack?
The British Heart Foundation urges that these symptoms experienced individually or in combination could be signs of a heart attack:
- chest pain or discomfort in your chest that comes on suddenly and doesn’t go away. It may feel like pressure, tightness or squeezing. The pain or discomfort may spread to one or both of your arms, or may spread to your neck, jaw, back or stomach
- shortness of breath or difficulty breathing with or without chest discomfort
- feeling dizzy, light-headed or faint
- feeling sick, indigestion, being sick
- sweating or a cold sweat
- a sudden feeling of anxiety that can feel like a panic attack
- a lot of coughing or wheezing
How can you prevent a heart attack?
The NHS recommends these following steps to prevent a heart attack:
- smokers should quit smoking
- lose weight if you’re overweight or obese
- do regular exercise – adults should do at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week, unless advised otherwise by the doctor in charge of your care
- eat a low-fat, high-fibre diet, including wholegrains and at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day
- moderate your alcohol consumption