I decided to write this post after a chat with @Kristofferquincy on read.cash, I feel as though so many people misunderstand medical terms and there's not a lot of straight-talk guidance for people. Most of it is just medical mumbo jumbo when it should be easy to understand information.

This is not meant to be medical advice or anything to help you conclude a diagnosis

You will need to visit a medical practitioner to have a formal diagnosis! And if you have the following symptoms, please contact the emergency services immediately (instead of reading this article):

• Chest pain that feels like an elephant on your chest, or stabbing pain

• Excessive sweating during an episode

• Difficulty breathing

Lets start with some anatomy

In your body you have got arteries and veins that provide oxygen and other nutrients to keep you going. Your organs need the oxygen and nutrients too. In your heart you've got the coronary arteries (and many others) which deliver that to your heart. Under normal circumstances you don't experience pain because everything is working.

When you get reduced flow of blood in the arteries feeding your heart, you will experience different types of pain depending on how large the blockage is. There are also people (mostly diabetics) who experience little to no pain because of the degradation of the nerve endings from consistently high blood sugar.

Anyway! The reduced blood flow...so you get different types of medical emergencies in terms of the heart, but I'm going to deal with the following:

• Angina

• Acute Myocardial Infarction (heart attack)

What's Angina?

Angina is when there is a build up of "plaque" in your blood vessels which makes it difficult to have normal blood flow (middle picture).

Above and lead image source, screenshot from: https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/your-heart/heart-conditions/angina

Side note: I would highly recommend visiting that site and reading up on their information!

You get stable angina and unstable angina.

Stable Angina

This is when chest pain normally occurs due to physical activity.

Unstable Angina

This is when you can be sitting, resting or sleeping and you can experience chest pain from the reduced blood flow. This is a medical emergency because it can quickly progress to a heart attack.

The "heart attack"

That's the common word used when someone has an event that leads to them clutching their chest, extreme pain, and then "dying" - where CPR is then initiated. The actual medical term for it is Acute Myocardial Infarction, which when broken down, basically means sudden heart death.

I don't do long and boring!

So that's pretty much it 🌻 if you would like more details or have questions, please pop them below and I'm happy to share any info I have with you.

You can check out a post I wrote about more medical stuff here:

https://read.cash/@JustMyRambles01/emergency-dispatch-and-a-plea-to-you-to-learn-first-aid-cpr-ee647cbc

Above image source: screenshot of my post