If you ever experience the symptoms of a heart attack, go immediately to the nearest hospital emergency room. Never take chances with heart disease.

A Heart Attack may cause some or all of these symptoms:

• Pain, pressure, fullness, discomfort or squeezing in the center of the chest
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Stabbing chest pain
• Radiating pain to shoulder(s), neck, back, arm(s) or jaw
• Pounding heartbeats (palpitations) or feeling extra heartbeats
• Upper abdominal pain
• Nausea, vomiting or severe indigestion
• Sweating for no apparent reason
• Dizziness with weakness
• Sudden extreme fatigue
• Panic with feeling of impending doom

The pain is quite distinct.

One person has described it as: “a heavy, strangulating, suffocating experience-far more intense than anything like indigestion, chest wall injuries, pleurisy or spasms of the esophagus that you are familiar with.

The pain may seem to start under the breastbone, on the left side of the chest, and sometimes radiates out to other places: throat, neck, jaw, left shoulder and arm and, occasionally, on to the right side.

There are several different types of heart attacks but even “angina”, the mildest form of heart attack , is an intense, scary episode. But with rest and calm (or by placing nitroglycerin or another kind of nitrate under the tongue), angina attacks usually go away in about 15 minutes or so. If they last longer than that, go to the hospital and have a thorough check up. Long-lasting angina attacks may be the prelude to more severe heart attacks.

For more information on the symptoms of heart attacks go to: http://holisticonline.com/remedies/Heart/heart_attack_identifying.htm

I have the misfortune of suffering with Lyme myocarditis and I will tell you from experience that it is the most terrifying aspect of my disease.

The attacks come without warning, even in from the depths of deep sleep, and ER doctors look at me like a crazy person because I don’t show signs of typical heart disease.

Don’t take a chance with your heart!

Lyme disease is a cause of myocarditis and heart muscle disease.

Lyme is a multisystem disorder that can attack any or every organ in the human body, causing unique infections from organ to organ. Unfortunately, absolute proof would require a biopsy of the infected tissue and the heart can only be studied after death.

However, recent studies using rhesus monkeys by Mario Phillip from Tulane University verify this unique phenomenon by demonstrating that the spirochetes change their genetic code by altering their proteins.

According to Pub Med, a study was conducted at the University of Austria in Vienna that verified Lyme disease as a cause of chronic heart muscle disease. Read about it here.