Knowing Heart Attack Signs

N E W   Y O R K, Feb. 22 -- Every morning while you are still asleep, your body experiences an adrenaline rush that helps it get revved up for the day. Most of us slumber through, ignorant of the ongoing biochemistry, but for people with coronary artery disease that morning rush can produce the scariest wake-up call of their lives.

For Bob Utecht the call came in 1996, when his body awakened him at 4 a.m. with a pain he believed was indigestion. The discomfort persisted for a couple of hours, as his skin grew clammy and his wife got more worried. By 7 a.m., she insisted he go to the hospital.

Utecht, 62 at the time, thought she might be overreacting, but was willing to humor her. He soon discovered he owed her his life.

"I didn't think it was serious," says the now-retired Poughkeepsie, N.Y. resident. "Until the ER doctors told me I was in the middle of a heart attack." The adrenaline rush had raised his blood pressure, rupturing the vulnerable, cholesterol-filled plaques lining his coronary arteries and cutting off the oxygen supply to his heart muscle.

Not All Attacks Classic

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According to Dr. Randolph Martin, professor of cardiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., Utecht's experience with an early morning heart attack is quite common. While many heart attack victims experience classic symptoms — such as an intense, ballooning chest pain, which radiates up to the arms, neck and eventually even teeth — up to a third of attacks have atypical signs, or are "silent."

Martin explains that the signs of a heart attack can vary from person to person, with women and diabetics usually more likely to experience subtle symptoms that make it difficult to recognize an attack is taking place. Those symptoms include abdominal pain, dizziness, unexplained anxiety, weakness, fatigue, palpitations and cold sweating.

"Women often present with extreme shortness of breath," says Emory's Martin. Instead of the chest pains that men tend to feel, female heart attack victims often experience an onset of intense nausea and abdominal pains, sweating, breathlessness and even vomiting.