Can stress cause chest pain left side

Are They Linked?: Woodlands Heart and Vascular Institute: Cardiologists

Anxiety and Chest Pain: Are They Linked?: Woodlands Heart and Vascular Institute: Cardiologists

Chest pain is a frightening experience that sends many people to the emergency room. Nearly half of them learn they don’t have a heart problem. Of those, 30-40% discover that anxiety was the culprit.

In short, anxiety and chest pain share a close relationship, but that doesn’t mean you can assume anxiety is to blame. You can’t risk delaying medical attention when there’s a chance you have a heart condition or you’re having a heart attack.

If you suspect you’re having a heart attack, call 911. Otherwise, Laura Fernandes, MD, FACC, at Woodlands Heart and Vascular Institute can run diagnostics in the office to rapidly determine if you have cardiovascular disease.

Learn how anxiety causes chest pain and if it’s possible to tell the difference between anxiety and heart-related symptoms.

Anxiety defined

Anxiety is your body’s natural reaction to a threat, whether the threat is immediate or in the future. Any time you feel anxious, your brain automatically sends out hormones that activate the fight-or-flight response.

Whether you’re stuck in traffic, worried about a job interview, or face a threatening situation, your brain’s natural reaction energizes your body so you can deal with the threat or quickly react and escape the situation.

How anxiety causes chest pain

When you’re anxious, your brain sends a surge of adrenaline and cortisol through your body. These hormones immediately trigger a rapid rise in your heart rate and blood pressure. As a result, many people experience chest pain and sweating, or have a hard time breathing.

The sudden boost of adrenaline can narrow the arteries in your heart and attach to cells inside the heart. This condition, called stress cardiomyopathy, mimics a heart attack, from symptoms all the way down to changes in your heart’s electrical activity.

Though stress cardiomyopathy usually heals within a few days or weeks, it may lead to weak heart muscles, congestive heart failure, and abnormal heart rhythms.

Levels of adrenaline and cortisol don’t return to normal in people with anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Chronically high hormone levels may trigger a panic attack (causing symptoms that feel like a heart attack) and increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Symptoms of anxiety vs. cardiac chest pain

It’s hard, if not impossible, to tell the difference between anxiety-induced chest pain and the pain caused by an underlying heart condition. In addition to your chest pain, both can cause:

Dizziness
Shortness of breath
Sweating
Heart palpitations
Feeling of dread or being out of control

Everyone experiences slightly different symptoms, whether they have anxiety or a heart problem. For this reason, the following two qualities aren’t written in stone. However, they’re generally true and may help you determine the cause of your chest pain:

Pain location

Chest pain from a heart attack often spreads throughout your chest and radiates to your jaw, shoulders, and arms. By comparison, chest pain from anxiety stays in your chest.

Pain patterns

Chest pain from a heart attack starts slowly and gradually gets worse, while an anxiety attack causes sudden chest pain that slowly improves. Many people find that anxiety-related chest pain goes away in about 10 minutes. However, other anxiety-related symptoms can last up to an hour after the pain improves.

If you have any questions about chest pain or other heart-related symptoms, call our office in The Woodlands, Texas,or schedule an appointment online today.

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Chest pain and anxiety: Symptoms, causes, and treatment

Chest pain is a common symptom of anxiety and panic attacks. Many people say it is the notable feature of their worst episodes.

About 25% of people will experience chest pain during their lifetime. There are different causes of chest pain, including a panic attack and an anxiety attack.

Approximately 27.3% of people in the United States experience a panic attack at some point in their lives. Annually, the prevalence of panic attacks is about 11%.

In addition, 2–3% of people in the U.S. develop a panic disorder each year. Panic disorder, which sometimes causes panic attacks, tends to affect women twice as often as men.

Both panic attacks and anxiety attacks can cause chest pain. These attacks are similar, although an anxiety attack can be less intense.

Anxiety attacks usually relate to a specific trigger in someone’s life, whereas a panic attack can happen without an obvious trigger.

In both cases, the symptoms occur due to stress hormones that trigger a person’s fight-or-flight response. This also causes other symptoms, such as difficulty breathing.

People who have frequent anxiety or panic attacks may have an anxiety disorder. There are different types of anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder.

To diagnose these conditions, a doctor needs to check that a person’s symptoms match those outlined in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition.

Researchers do not know exactly what causes anxiety disorders, but it is likely a combination of biological, genetic, and environmental factors.

Chest pain due to anxiety or panic attacks can usually feel like a sharp, stabbing sensation that starts suddenly, even if a person is inactive. However, they may be feeling stressed or anxious already before the chest pain begins.

Common accompanying symptoms of an anxiety or panic attack include:

dizziness
faintness
shortness of breath
trembling
changes in body temperature
feeling out of control of the situation
numbness and sweating in the feet and hands
chest pain
heart palpitations

Chest pain is more common in attacks that come on quickly. According to research from 2019, the prevalence of chest pain among people having a panic attack is about 28.5%.

Although heart attack occurs in 805,000 people in the U.S. every year, only 2–4% of individuals with chest pain who come in to see a doctor receive a heart problem diagnosis.

Nevertheless, having chest pain can be alarming, as it is still likely it could be due to a heart attack.

It is important to know that while there are similarities between anxiety chest pain and pain due to a heart attack, there are also some significant differences.

A heart attack has a different cause. It occurs due to a blockage in a person’s coronary artery. Also, chest pain from an anxiety or panic attack most often develops when an individual is at rest. By contrast, heart attack pain most often develops when a person is active.

Pain from a heart attack also frequently travels from the chest to other parts of the body, such as the jaw, shoulders, and arms. In contrast, chest pain stemming from anxiety remains in the chest.

Furthermore, anxiety chest pain may feel sharper than the pain caused by a heart attack, which people often describe as a squeezing, heavy pressure.

There is also a difference in whom panic attacks and heart attacks affect. While panic disorders are more common in women, heart attacks are more common in men.

Learn how to tell the difference between a panic attack and a heart attack here.

When to contact a doctor

It can be hard to know whether one is having a panic attack or a heart attack. Therefore, a person should seek immediate medical care if they or someone else is experiencing sudden and severe chest pain, particularly in the center or left parts of their chest.

Other warning signs of a heart attack include pressure in the chest lasting more than 2–3 minutes or pain that radiates to the arm or the jaw. A person may also feel short of breath.

Both panic disorders and cardiovascular problems are treatable conditions, so receiving a diagnosis from a doctor will help ensure that individuals receive the appropriate treatment.

Professional help can make a significant difference in the lives of individuals who experience panic attacks and anxiety. Without treatment, these conditions can limit a person’s quality of life.

However, medications and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have proven to be effective at treating panic disorders in many instances.

CBT teaches a person to restructure their thoughts and identify and avoid specific anxiety triggers. This type of therapy can help individuals reduce and manage the symptoms of panic disorder without using medication.

There are also steps a person can take at home to manage and reduce anxiety symptoms, including chest pain.

It is advisable to try the following practices to help cope with a panic attack:

Find safe shelter: A person should find a secure and comfortable place if possible and consider pulling over if driving.
Take deep breaths: Steady, deep breathing can help reduce symptoms of anxiety and prevent them from getting worse.
Remember it is temporary: While experiencing chest pain, focus on the fact that these symptoms should last no more than a few minutes.
Try to stay positive: Focusing on peaceful or positive images may help people reduce the severity of their symptoms during a panic attack.
Count: Counting to 10 or 20 and then repeating can help individuals focus during a panic attack.
Rate the attack: Some people find that reviewing their general state of mind during a panic attack and giving it a score on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most severe and 1 being a barely noticeable sensation, can help them manage their anxiety.

Also, there are some lifestyle changes a person can make to reduce their risk of symptoms:

exercising regularly
getting enough sleep
avoiding caffeine, alcohol, and smoking
avoiding foods high in refined sugar

Learn more about treatments for an anxiety attack and how to stop a panic attack.

Chest pain can accompany both anxiety and panic attacks. People who get such attacks frequently may have an anxiety disorder.

These conditions are treatable. It is important to receive an evaluation from a doctor so that a person can get the most suitable treatment.

As a precaution, if someone is experiencing sudden chest pain, they should seek immediate medical treatment to rule out a heart attack.

Below, we answer some frequently asked questions about anxiety chest pain.

What causes anxiety chest pain on the left side?

Anxiety could cause chest pain on the left side. However, it can also be a sign of a heart attack or pericarditis, so a person should seek immediate medical attention.

What do I do if my anxiety chest pain is not going away?

In most cases, anxiety chest pain will develop quickly and then fade somewhat rapidly.

If a person’s chest pain is not going away or if it is increasing gradually, this may be a sign of a heart attack. If this happens, they should get medical attention as soon as possible.

What to do if anxiety and chest pain haunt you?

With age comes an understanding of what is important in life, and many routine problems and troubles fade into the background, our priorities and values change - what used to make us nervous and worried no longer seems so significant. We begin to appreciate more the moments that we were lucky to spend with our family, the long-awaited trips to nature and nice friendly gatherings. But we suddenly realize that even such pleasant experiences as the joy that the news of the birth of a grandson or the long-awaited news about the successful passing of exams by the youngest son can bring our body out of balance and even cause chest pain, as well as general malaise. It's all because of strong emotions, which even with a plus sign can lead to violations in the coordinated work of some body systems. How to help the body when the heart and pressing pain in the chest are worried? With age, almost each of us acquires a first-aid kit of “our own” medicines, which are designed to help out in difficult emergency situations when there is no time or opportunity to seek professional medical help. Of course, it is important that, if necessary, in such a first-aid kit there is a remedy that can help to cope with a sudden influx of emotions, pressing pain in the chest and normalize the state of the body. In this context, the topical emergency drug is CORMENTOL. It is convenient to use, has a favorable safety profile, and its effect appears within a few minutes after administration.

The world is beautiful and full of surprises, but our body is arranged in such a way that even pleasant surprises make it group up and be ready for anything. Therefore, joyful events can become stressful for us, which in moderation is even useful, because it allows our body to train and thus prepare for more difficult trials. The reaction to stress is individual for each person, it depends on various factors - gender, age, personality type and other features.

With age, malfunctions begin to appear in the work of many body systems, we are no longer the same as before, what was once given with ease, now requires great effort. As we age, our ability to deal with stressors may decrease. In this case, a person is faced with various manifestations of maladaptation. People around us begin to notice our nervousness, fussiness, absent-mindedness, and sometimes irritability. And the dream is no longer the same as it once was. And in moments of a surge of emotions, tachycardia (increased heartbeat), dizziness, dry mouth, headache, etc. begin to disturb.

How to stay calm? Some try to avoid stressful situations, but, unfortunately, this is not always possible, others try to benefit from a difficult stressful situation, others try to cope with the influx of emotions. Today, you can easily find a lot of advice on how to help the body overcome anxiety. Here are just a few of them:

Take a walk - in the office you can go to the cooler for water. You just need to get up from your chair and walk for a couple of minutes at a fast pace.

Watch your breathing: You can learn some yoga techniques to help you achieve calm and even breathing.

Talk to some pleasant and positive person about topics that have nothing to do with the cause of your excitement.

Unfortunately, working on yourself does not always bring the desired results, especially if you find yourself in the grip of strong emotions (and absolutely unexpectedly). You continue to be bothered by a rapid heartbeat, pressing pain in the chest, general malaise, and the excitement does not want to recede. In this case, various emergency measures will be relevant, including drugs indicated for mild angina attacks, neurosis, such as CORMENTOL. In addition, the drug will be useful as an antiemetic for sea and air sickness, headache associated with the use of nitrates.

The active substance of CORMENTOL is menthol dissolved in isovaleric acid methyl ester. These active ingredients are known to many as the main constituents of peppermint essential oil. Mint has been widely used in traditional medicine since ancient times and is still popular today. It was used for increased heart rate, abdominal pain, headache. However, science does not stand still and today, thanks to its achievements, we have the opportunity to use active ingredients that were previously available only as part of infusions, decoctions, extracts, separately as medicines that have a calming, antispasmodic, antiemetic, anti-inflammatory and other effects. So, menthol in the composition of CORMENTOL has a stimulating property in relation to the respiratory center, suppresses the gag reflex. It is used as part of the complex therapy of migraine, neuralgia and other neurological diseases. Isovaleric acid esters have a calming effect.

It should be noted that CORMENTOL has a moderate vasodilating effect due to reflex stimulation of sensitive nerve (cold) receptors of the oral mucosa. Stimulation of the receptors is accompanied by the induction of the release of endorphins, enkephalins, dynorphins and other opioid peptides, which play an important role in reducing the severity of pain, normalizing vascular permeability and regulating other important mechanisms of the functioning of the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Due to the fact that this drug is taken sublingually, the therapeutic effect occurs after about 5 minutes. In addition, since CORMENTOL is available in the form of soft gelatin capsules, it is very convenient to use. Indeed, unlike drops, there is no need to take care of the presence of water - just put the capsule under the tongue, which is especially important in stressful situations. And for an even faster onset of action, the capsule can be cracked. In addition, this method of administration helps to avoid the characteristic smell of menthol in the room, which will be especially pleasant for people who do not perceive it.

The package contains 15 capsules, which allows you to always have CORMENTOL on hand and take it in a difficult situation.

CORMENTOL - and be calm!

Evgenia Lukyanchuk

Imet

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