A television doctor has delivered a serious warning regarding heart attack symptoms in women, stating they are “too often” disregarded as something less severe. Dr Nighar Arif, a specialist in women’s health who has appeared on the BBC and ITV, explained the manner in which women may suffer heart attacks are frequently “dangerously overlooked”, reports Wales Online.
Speaking in a video on TikTok she said: “You’re too anxious – that’s what too many women hear while their heart is literally struggling for oxygen. And I see it in my clinics as well, because we were taught heart attacks look like a man clutching his chest. It’s sharp, it’s dramatic, it’s obvious.
“But over the years, as somebody who does women’s health and I’ve realised in women it’s not the case at all. It’s quieter, it’s easy to dismiss, it’s easier to miss.”
Highlighting the “red flags” she wants women to recognise, she added: “It can feel like breathlessness that you can’t explain, nausea that won’t settle, a dull spread of pain into your back, between the shoulder blades, around your shoulders and even your jaw. A sense that something is deeply wrong, even if you can’t name it. And also you might get flu like symptoms, so it doesn’t fit that textbook symptoms and it gets labelled as anxiety or stress, an overreaction.”
Dr Arif added: “Here’s the truth we don’t say loudly enough. Young women are twice as likely as men their age to die in the year after a heart attack. Not because their hearts are weaker, because their symptoms were overlooked, dismissed, delayed. This isn’t rare, this is happening every day.
“So I want you to know this. If something feels off, even if it doesn’t look like a heart attack, trust your body. Think about it as being a heart attack in women, because women have cardiovascular disease risks and they’re often told it’s probably just anxiety.”
The charity states: “Symptoms can vary from person to person, but there are no symptoms that are more common in women than in men. Misconceptions around symptoms may make women less likely to seek and receive treatment.
“These misconceptions may also delay diagnosis, making poor outcomes more likely. Coronary heart disease kills more than twice as many women than breast cancer in the UK every year. But despite this, it’s often considered a man’s disease.”
The organisation continued by outlining the most common warning signs of a heart attack as:
- sudden and persisting pain or discomfort in the chest that feels like pressure, tightness, or squeezing
- the pain may spread to either arm, the neck, jaw, back, or stomach
- you may also feel sick, sweaty, light-headed or short of breath
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This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
