Heartrate during heart attack???

[secondtimelucky]

Hi all, hope progress is finding you well :) Hopefully someone can help me out here, this wiil be a long one, sorry...

Iv had HA since my first panic attack about 8 months ago, now my biggest fear is having a heart-attack. Since then Iv tried giving up smoking, failed a few times but in the last month Iv gone from 20-30 a day to 2-3 'half' roll-ups :)

In the last couple of weeks I keep getting pains in my chest at random, mostly while relaxing, right over the centre of my rib-cage, sometimes with matching pain in the centre of my uppper back.

Obviously, being me, I keep thinking 'here comes the heart attack' , but what else can cause this kind of pain? Any other insight to reassure me please???

One thing I have noticed is my heart doesnt speed up much, maybe 5-10bpm, would this be a good indicator of nothing major?

Thanks in advance :) this is driving me nuts!!!!! :curse:

[CameronG]

Hi.

If your suffering from HA the last thing you want to do is find out the heart rate for a heart attack, all that will do is convince you next time that "oh my god this really is it".

When I did CBT some time ago my therapist suggested I researched people's accounts of there heart attacks, needless to say I thought this was ridiculous and never went back as in my opinion his methods seemed absurd to me.

I did however come up with something I thought would help which was to compare myself to people I know, I wrote up little questionnaires like, heart rate when you 1st wake, resting, after walking stairs, afternoon, evening, before sleep etc and compared.

Try that, you'll probably see some people's heart rate that you know are higher or the same which would make you normal believe it or not lol, one friend commented to me, it's funny how my heart rate (meaning him) was higher than mine, yet he doesn't bat an eyelid and I'm scared of mine. Funny what anx/panic does.

Good luck

Cam

[Arnie365]

It could be indigestion and heartburn thought don't get any burning or acid feelings. I get chest pains a lot (my main symptom) and always worried I was on the verge of a heart attack. After numerous tests I've finally accepted my heart is fine.

With it I've had pains in my back as well. It could also be trapped wind caused by digestion issues.

[Daisy Sue]

i'm thinking along the same lines as Arnie... acid reflux or some kind of gastric/esophageal irritation... i've had it where the pain shoots from front to back, and it's been helped with ant-acid medication.

i am pretty sure if it were heart related, you'd have other symptoms.