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chitrangda

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To the OP: This actually sounds rather serious.

 

Sort of off-topic, but also about similar symptoms, if anyone wants answer. At random times during the day I get this feeling of pain in my chest and I can't really move because it hurts...well...a lot...

I don't get the pain in the arm, which is good, because the pain in my chest is pretty...painful...

I don't know what it is, I'm rather healthy, albeit underweight.

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Hmmm, two people who suffer severe chest pains and rather than going to a doctor asap, choose instead to chat about it on their favourite forum.

 

This is evolution in action.

 

If you suffer chest pains, you really need to get checked out by a doctor! The pains may be benign, but nobody can tell you that online.

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To the OP: This actually sounds rather serious.

 

Sort of off-topic, but also about similar symptoms, if anyone wants answer. At random times during the day I get this feeling of pain in my chest and I can't really move because it hurts...well...a lot...

I don't get the pain in the arm, which is good, because the pain in my chest is pretty...painful...

I don't know what it is, I'm rather healthy, albeit underweight.

 

That would be angina pectoris, which can happen to ppl from time to time brought on by physical exertion or quick sudden movements after one has been in a relaxed state for a while; for example if you were sitting down watching tv and all of a sudden you make a quick movement to e.g. quickly reach out and grab the remote. When this occurs and you try to move, you feel a sharp pain in your chest which usually subsides when you sit back down and relax for a bit. However if you get angina manifesting frequently, or if the pain tends to last for more than a few minutes then you should go see you doctor about it, for this can be a symptom of a serious heart disease (like coronary artery disease for instance).

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Is it allways important that chest pain is releated to heart related problems??????

 

Not all chest pain is associated with heart related problems. For instance, you can get muscle cramping in the chest muscles. However, the symptoms described in the OP, particularly pain or numbness in the left arm, are typical of a myocardial infarction. Antimatter's post could be angina, muscle cramping, or perhaps a medialstinum tumor. He/she should go to a doctor to check it out.

 

The deal is that, with chest pain, it is better to be safe than sorry. If you get severe chest pain, if it is a heart attack and you ignore it, then you are really, really screwed. If you call the paramedics and it isn't a heart attack, there is a bill to pay but basically no harm done.

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  • 2 years later...

Because of the heart's migration through the chest during evolution, it has left a trail of nerve connections leading away from it to the arm. That is why 'heart pains' are often felt away from the heart. Many more patients think they are having heart troubles when in fact they are having chest muscle pains, so if these pains are dependent on chest muscle activity rather than general exertion, they might not be angina. It's always worth having these issues professionally investigated, not because much useful can be done, but at least so that you can start to worry on a more sophisticated level of knowledge.

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i experience pain in my chest with rear numness in my left arm followed by anzyity. i got my ecg done but no problem was there

 

I hate to have-a-hammer-see-a-nail here, but when you put it that way, we could be talking about panic disorder. As any psychologist, psychiatrist, or ER doc can tell you, anxiety can mimic any physical symptom. Of course, with symptoms like these, you should be insisting on medical workups--probably a couple of blood tests, an EKG, and an echocardiogram are sort of standard front-line tests. That (in my admittedly nonmedical opinion) sounds more or less prudent for anyone with symptoms like this. Chest hurts? Get the heart checked out, early and well. That all goes without saying.

 

However, it sounds like there has been at least one normal workup, and also that your symptoms are accompanied by some amount of anxiety. While continued medical attention is probably appropriate, I'd consider a referral to a psychologist as well, particularly if you think the anxiety is prominent or problematic for you.

 

Panic disorder in particular has one very common presentation, something I've seen quite a few times: woman in early adulthood with a past-year history of what the ER docs often call "noncardiac chest pain." It's a very common way for things to initially present. Panic attacks can include chest pain, shortness of breath, parasthesias (weird physical sensations like numbness) and a lot of other physical, emotional, and cognitive experiences. They frequently occur in individuals who are more sensitive to their own internal sensations.

 

Luckily, treatments for PD are really, really good. Try to find a psychologist who does cognitive-behavioral therapy which includes a treatment called interoceptive exposure. It's among the best interventions we have, with short-term and long-term success rates superior to antianxiety medication.

 

That said, of course, keep seeing your physician! Talk to him or her about referrals to psychologists if you're interested. Nobody here can really give you medical advice appropriate to your specific condition.

 

 

 

P.S.: If you're in the USA, ABCT's Therapist Finder is a good place if you're ever interested in finding therapists trained in the sort of techniques I'm talking about, and you're not sure where to start looking.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Holy crap, just noticed the original post is from Summer 2008. Hope things are figured out/better by now. If not, uhhh, well, I guess all that still applies.

Edited by PhDwannabe
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What distinguishes panic symptoms from real ones is that the panic-induced symptoms are dictated by what the non-medically educated patients believe they should be feeling, while the real symptoms fail to conform to the patients' expectations. Thus nephrologists are constantly confronted by patients with lower back pain who are sure that they have renal disease, but who fail to appreciate that the kidneys are located in the middle of the back, not in the lower back.

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What distinguishes panic symptoms from real ones is that the panic-induced symptoms are dictated by what the non-medically educated patients believe they should be feeling, while the real symptoms fail to conform to the patients' expectations. Thus nephrologists are constantly confronted by patients with lower back pain who are sure that they have renal disease, but who fail to appreciate that the kidneys are located in the middle of the back, not in the lower back.

 

There are many elegant psychosomatic situations in which this is the case--glove paralysis is the classic one. However, this is not differentially diagnostic of symptoms of panic attacks or similar acute stress states. Several reasons:

 

1) Panic symptoms are often "real" symptoms, created by the cascade of stress hormones involved in a panic attack.

2) Many times, individuals' beliefs of what they "should" be feeling are more or less accurate--accurate enough to often sound indistinguishably similar to to the "real" symptoms. PD patients show up in ERs reporting chest pain, tightness, numbness down the arms, inability to catch their breath. Medical testing, not reliable differences in subjective reporting, sort out the cardiac events from the non.

3) People's subjective feelings of--and reports of--symptoms of "real" pathophysiological states are also often similarly clouded by expectation. It's all a big mess.

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  • 2 months later...

W/o a complete patient history it's difficult to ascertain what exactly is going on. However, AMIs and angina pectoris are relatively limited to the geriatric/bariatric crowd and aren't responsible for all cases of chest pain. Chronic high BP could cause stenosis which might explain her acute chest pain and paresthesia. Excessively high levels of epinephrine from SNS stimulation due to panic attacks or undue stress could result in the development of arrhythmias and paresthesias that could come and go somewhat spontaneously, which could explain why initial ECG was clear...

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  • 3 weeks later...

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