Mild Heart Attack Symptoms: What Do They Mean?

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You may have heard the expression “mild heart attack” and wondered exactly what it means. A bone, for example, can have a hairline fracture or a major break. A stroke can have relatively minor consequences or be severely debilitating. So can a heart attack be mild or major?

The short answer is “yes.” It depends on the extent of damage to the heart muscle itself. Keep in mind, however, that mild heart attack symptoms resemble those of a more serious heart attack. That’s because heart attack causes refer to the blockage in one or more coronary arteries, no matter what kind of lasting consequences they leave behind.

Heart Attack Causes

By definition, a heart attack is the result of blockage in an artery that supplies blood to the heart muscle. These blood vessels are called coronary arteries. You’ve probably heard the term “coronary artery disease,” or CAD. That just means that there’s plaque buildup in one or more of the heart’s arteries. The plaque is a waxy substance that includes LDL cholesterol, fats, and other waste products from your bloodstream.

There are some less-common heart attack causes, too. One of your coronary arteries could spasm and shut off blood flow to the heart muscle. Sometimes smoking or illicit drugs can result in coronary artery spasm. Also unusual, but still possible, is a tear in a coronary artery; this is called a spontaneous coronary artery dissection.

Know the Warning Signs

The clinical name for a heart attack is a “myocardial infarction.” If one is in your future, of course you want it to be a mild heart attack. Symptoms for any type of heart attack, however, include the following signs:

  • Chest pain, in many cases pain that comes and goes. It may be centered in the chest or spread from one side to the other.
  • Shortness of breath.
  • Nausea, sometimes with vomiting.
  • Pain or tingling in one or both arms. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security if the pain is only in your right arm. Arm discomfort due to a heart attack isn’t limited to the left side.
  • Jaw, neck, or back pain.

One other common heart attack symptom is anxiety, or a vague but undeniable feeling that something’s wrong.

Research shows that a heart attack causes victims to feel like they’re having a panic attack. But this is a dangerous assumption. Rather than get help immediately, some individuals having a heart attack want to chalk up their symptoms to indigestion or anxiety or feeling worn out from too much exertion.

In addition, if the pressure in your chest isn’t too uncomfortable and you’re just a little short of breath, you may think you’re having some mild heart attack symptoms. This could lead you to not take them seriously.

It’s true that some people have what are sometimes referred to as “silent heart attacks.” These result from temporary blockages in the coronary arteries. Sometimes they don’t even produce mild heart attack symptoms. Evidence of a silent heart attack may only appear much later when your doctor is examining your heart for other reasons.

But you can’t count on a heart attack to be temporary or cause only minimal damage.

Whether they are mild, major, or somewhere in between, heart attack symptoms must be treated as an emergency. The faster you seek medical help for a heart attack, the less damage your heart will suffer. A disruption of blood flow to the heart is a problem, and there will be consequences.

If you have risk factors for a heart attack, including high LDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, diabetes, or a family history of heart disease, and you start to feel heart attack symptoms of any kind, call 911. Sometimes fast treatment is what makes the difference between a heart attack being mild or major.

Originally published in May 2015 and updated.

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