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Chest Pain


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At times I will get almost sharp pains in my chest..but at other times it will be more of an uncomfortable heavy feeling. I think that is a bit more disturbing. The location can vary as well. Have you had any tests done or ekg's etc??

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Typically for me it will be a pressure type sensation like my chest is being squeezed or constricted, other times its like I feel a weight on my chest all day. It's not usually painful, but it can be very hard to deal with and sometimes I get a weird nausea that goes with it.

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I have constant chest pain, typically left sided, and it NEVER goes away. I begin feeling the pain within thirty seconds to one minute of waking and it remains in various stages until I go to sleep at night. The sensations I feel when I have the pain: sometimes it is a dull ache like pressure that needs to be released, other times it is incredibly sharp and I can pinpoint the exact location, other times I feel like something is just blocked, and I often feel like someone is electrically shocking my from the inside. The pain often travels into my back and down my left arm. I have had cardiac testing performed over the past year and have been told that aside from a large number of palpitations, and of course the tachycardia, my heart is "normal". It is by far my most annoying and scary symptom.

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Thank u for responses. Yes Ive had lots of ecgs, echoes, holter monitors. I used to get thousands of ectopics a day, but had an ablation 3 years ago. For about 3 years is how long I've had the 'heart attack' symptoms. Left sided squeezing, gripping in the chest, arm pain, back pain, lightheadedness, nausea.. I get episodes of these symptoms at various degrees. Frightening, but have been to ER quite a few times and they don't know. Only once had a mild troponin rise.

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My chest pain usually starts by feeling like a 100 lb weight is sitting on my chest. Then, I get sharp, gripping shooting pains from my sternum across to my left shoulder in the upper half of my rib cage. Sometimes the pain shoots up into my left neck and down my left arm. I also tend to have nausea with it as well as sweating and air hunger. Often, it feels like the veins in my neck are being constricted or squeezed off at the same time. I have often wondered how I will ever know the difference between this and the early warning signs of a heart attack. I unfortunately don't have an answer for that.

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I get this, as angina. Not enough blood gets back to the heart when upright, but not due to coronary artery disease.

I can exercise stood up get my HR to about 134-150 get angina.

Lay down and exercise, HR 150-190 no problems.

*****, makes walking places hard because as soon as my HR is up and I vasodilate due to getting hot boom angina woo!!!

I get the typical arm pain, jaw, horrible sensation in chest etc and PVC,s I just sit down or lay down and it resolves.

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From all of the responses above, there is a typical smattering of descriptions of the various types of chest pain. What is key is the autonomic "active" symptoms which you describe. As andybonse rightly described disruption of blood flow to the heart muscle itself can cause these particular symptoms. This may be 'triggered' or may be 'spontaneous' which is both frustrating and worring. Both the sharp, specific stabbing-like pains and the generalised-constricting heavy pains (usually down the left arm) are caused by autonomic disruption at the levels of T1-T4 which explains the jaw/arm/chest pains. Frustrating yet reassuring to me knowing that these pains are POTS symptoms.

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What Andy describes is what I call my POTS chest pain, or discomfort. It varies in intensity from mild discomfort to being painful. It could or could not be relieved by lying down. Lying down and relaxing often does help.

Separately, I get another pain that is distinct. It is more problematic for me. These pains come late at night when I relax. I will get periods of relief, but I can get caught in cycles where it occurs nightly for lengths of time. When I am in this cycle, it follows a circadian rhythm. It occurs while at rest, and if I sit up before it goes on too long, it may subside. When it gets bad only time and nitro helps.

This can also occur for me waking up. If I am waken up early or abruptly especially. Any exertion in the morning can trigger it. I only connect the two by the symptoms.

This pain is much more painful for me, mostly occurs at rest (supine), follows a circadian rhythm, waxes and wanes etc. I have had elevated troponin a few times when evaluated, but I have never been able to get it caught on an EKG etc. By the time I get there, it will have subsided. The irony is I will have it return once I get home to relax and sleep.

The elevated troponin, the description and pattern, has caused a couple top doctors to treat me for coronary spasms. Unfortunately I am reacting to those medications.

Nitro does relieve this pain if I take enough, but nitro causes me it's own problems so I am reluctant to take it.

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HI guys,

A wide variety of health issues can cause chest pain/discomfort. There's no easy way to tell without seeing a doctor. I'm sure many of you have been going through this for a long time, and my heart goes out to you because of this.. but you can never be certain that it's "nothing" unless you''ve been checked out by your physician and he/she is treating you for an exact condition.

I hope everyone feels better, but chest pains are nothing to take lightly.

Sarah

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Sarah,

You're totally on point with that reminder. I was sent for all kinds of tests when my chest pain started to rule out any insidious conditions before my docs chalked it up to POTS. Because POTS (and for me, migraines) can cause heart attack and/or stroke symptoms, my rule of thumb is to have any new symptoms checked out by the docs before assuming it's POTS.

And, just as an example of why we shouldn't assume anything, my migraines are currently uncontrolled. One of my docs put that together with some of my other symptoms and realized I should be checked for hypercoagulability syndromes. Sure enough, I do have a gene mutation that makes me a thrombosis risk (and is likely causing my migraines). There's no way to tell the future, but this revelation may have saved my life by allowing us to take preventative measures to try to reduce my risk of having a major cardiovascular event at some point. It is so important to check things out.

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