Tackling a Heart Attack - The Do's and Don'ts

Heart attack is one amongst the health conditions that are believed to occur without any initial symptoms. Naturally, it is not always a silent attack. Why do the signs go unnoticed then? The improper food habits of people these days are quite likely to give rise to gastric problems which arouse similar symptoms as a heart attack would. With slight heart attack pain, patients usually hesitate in getting medical help and misconstrue it as gastric trouble or angina pain.

Listen to your heart
It always tells you the right thing. Indigestion, fatigue, headache, pain in neck and jaws, abdominal pain and nausea are some of the heart attack symptoms that are mostly overlooked. The most common noticeable symptoms of heart attack include:

Pain in chest usually on the left side and in the worst case, on the right side

Pain in the upper part of the body including neck, arms and shoulders

Cold Sweats accompanied with angina-like pain

Sudden dizziness and shortness of breath
If there is noticeable pain that lasts for over 30 minutes and starts growing more intense, it is quite likely to be a heart attack.

The Do’s while tackling a Heart Attack
Once you get an indication that a light or hard attack is likely to hit, don’t panic and follow the smart steps to handling the situation:

Just leave everything that you had been doing and lie down in a comfortable position

Call for an emergency ambulance to carry you to the hospital

Try to place your legs at an elevated angle on the wall so that blood easily flows to your heart

Chew some aspirin and try to grab a glass of water

Patients observing frequent heart attacks should take three nitroglycerin tablets in a row at an interval of 5 minutes each

If it seems like you are about to cease breathing, ask someone to give you CPR (Cardio Pulmonary Respiration) until medical help arrives or until you are carried to the hospital

The Don’ts while tackling a Heart Attack
Don’t wait for too long for the notable symptoms to go away

Don’t hesitate in calling for emergency help even if it seems a misconception

Make sure you do not swallow aspirin or nitroglycerin tablets unless they have been prescribed to you by a doctor who has examined you for previous heart problems

If you have a vehicle and the pain starts climbing up from the chest to the shoulders or neck, do not take the risk of driving your vehicle to the hospital. Instead, ask someone close by to drive you there

Don’t get anxious or worry about the time wasted when you reach the hospital. Let the doctors perform ECG tests and wait for the response

Don’t show reluctance on taking an injection for thinning of blood and let the doctor do his job while keeping your mind and heart at rest

Today, the number of heart attacks noticed in the human race is increasing at a great pace. There is another category known as silent heart attacks that come without any pain in chest or heaviness in breath. There is nothing that an individual can do about it but for the known ones that strike after a prior notice, make sure you don’t misjudge the signals that your heart is trying to give you. Keeping calm and working out a simply planned out precautionary technique can help a lot in reducing the severity levels of a heart attack.