I suffer from frequent severe panic attacks and I’m constantly having to talk myself out of the notion that I’m having a heart attack. It may sound silly but they share a lot of symptoms, such as:
Palpitations and a racing heart rate.
Chest pain.
Breathlessness.
Nausea.
Pains, numbness, heaviness/weakness and tingling in the left arm (or any extremity, but for me it always seems to be the left arm.)
A sense of impending doom.
Why are the symptoms so similar? I mean, I get why a panic attack would trigger a sense of impending doom but why would a heart attack do that? If that sounds like a silly question, bear in mind that for a lot of people a sense of doom is one of the first symptoms they get, before chest pain or nausea or anything else. There must be something physical going on. What is it?
I ask because I’m sick of having to talk myself out of the notion that I’m having a heart attack. I’ve had a ton of tests (bloods, echo, treadmill, 72 hour tape, countless ECG’s) and they’ve all come back normal, but when the panic attacks come on all of that reassurance is suddenly worth jack shit.
So yeah, since I know nothing about biology, I’d really appreciate it if any medical people on the boards could explain (a) why the two are so superficially similar, and (b) is there any reliable way I can tell the difference between the two in the moment?
Thanks very much in advance.