Angina is a coronary heart related symptoms seen both in men as well as women. If allowed to go unnoticed or untreated, it can result in a condition as serious as heart attack. It affects mostly people above fifty years of age but the modern lifestyle and pollution sometimes sets the symptoms much earlier. The arteries that supply blood to heart muscles get blocked and this happens due to fats and cholesterol plaque deposits.
A person feels temporary pain which comes with overexertion and goes away when person rests or relaxes. Depending upon severity of condition, pressure is felt in the chest.
Angina can be experienced even by people who do not have coronary disease. People who are anemic also face angina problem. People with thicker heart muscles can also have angina symptoms as cells do not get sufficient oxygen because of thickness of walls. For better understanding of the symptom we will divide Angina into three categories; stable; unstable; and variant angina.
Stable angina is the most common of all types and most often seen occurring in people. If dismissed, it can turn into unstable angina. In stable angina person feels pain on exerting his/her body beyond a point because arteries have narrowed down and so has hearts capacity to handle physical stress. Narrowed arteries bring increased discomfort.
In unstable angina pain occurs when body undergoes exertion and otherwise also on its own when it is resting.
The pain is persistent and is considered a more sever condition than stable angina. A person is expected to be alert and awake to such symptoms that its body is releasing from time to time to be able to tackle it in best possible manner when there is time and scope to fix the situation.
Variant angina is a rare symptom and not seen to occur in people with cardiovascular problems too often. This kind of symptom is caused due to contraction or seizure in the coronary muscles in the artery wall which end up shrinking the artery and thereby restricting the blood flow. When a person gets this attack it is usually during the night and experiences extreme pain.
Angina Symptoms in Men is has been reported are more acute than they are in women.
Women feel less pressure and pain in the chest as compared to men. Even Nausea or breathlessness is more common among men than in women.
Some of the symptoms indicating at angina are burning in chest; chest pain and difficulty in breathing; increased heartbeat; fatigue, sweating and feeling of heaviness; pain extending down to the arms, neck, shoulder and even the back; belching; feeling restless, suffocated, or tightening in the center of chest.
Coming to Angina symptoms in women, the moment a woman feels pressure or pain along with pressure or feeling of suffocation in the chest she should visit doctor.
The chest pain due to angina is generally felt on the left hand side and should not be mistaken for pain due to gases or indigestion. Women should also keep in mind that in angina symptom, chest pain lasts for about five minutes.
The indications are mostly same as that of angina in men however some peculiar symptoms related with women may include Chest pain behind the breastbone; excess perspiration; bouts of anxiety and fatigue; feeling of chocking or forming lump in the throat; women feeling light-headed and weak; heartburn; unbearable sudden pain in left arm, extending to shoulders and back; sometimes she may also experience absolute numbness in one or both the arms.
Prinzmetal’s angina or variant angina is an automatic reflex or vasospasm of the coronary artery and a less common angina that occurs mostly at night, or when the person is not doing any kind of physically straining activity, when she or he is at rest, and this is what differentiates this angina with stable and unstable angina, wherein the patient feels pain on doing some very physically exerting work.
It’s a sudden crushing pain in the chest that attacks a person while he/she is sleeping or at rest. There is no fixed treatment for this kind of angina. Treatment is generally given at the time of attack, some prevention like changes in lifestyle, smoking, drinking, are advised. Sometimes the frequency of these attacks increase and hospitalization may be the only option left for the patient.
To avoid this situation symptom should be attended to at an early stage. The final outcome if symptom is continued to dismiss could lead to heart attack.
