What It's Like to Have a Heart Attack in Your 30s
Heart attacks don’t only happen later in life.
Angela Lacelle woke up and went about her day like it was any other. Then, while she was out shopping, something felt amiss. “I was really nauseated and went back and forth between feeling hot and cold,” says Angela. “My chest started burning.” Maybe it was something she ate. Maybe it was just anxiety. After all, she did have a history of anxiety, and was used to heart palpitations during anxiety attacks.
“I can’t be having a heart attack, could I?” she asked a friend as she talked on her cellphone during her walk home.
She was—at the age of 37. When she got to the hospital, the nurses immediately rushed her in, gave her two pills to chew (she later realized it was aspirin), and hooked her up to an IV and electrocardiogram machine, the latter to measure her heart’s activity.
Doctors discovered that her heart’s circumflex artery was 99 percent blocked from a clot. “I wanted to say, “Get the f*** out,” she recalls. Luckily, cardiologists were able to open it. They told her that, while the rest of her arteries had only moderate plaque build-up, the plaque ruptured and had become lodged in her heart.
The Emotional Recovery
“Even though I was ‘fixed,’ it was still such a shock to the system,” says Angela. It really did flatten me. There were weeks when pretty much all I did was cry—just out of fear. What will my life look like now?”
Meanwhile, “I felt like I aged 40 years practically overnight,” says Darlene Ruiz, 35, who had a heart attack last year at the age of 34. “Things like brushing my teeth or showering wore me out, and I’d have to take a nap afterward. I think people expected me to be over it a month or so later. My energy levels got better each day, though, and now I’m to the point where I can’t tell it even happened, at least physically.”
But mentally and emotionally, the scars are still raw. “Wondering if, or when, it will happen again is the worst,” says Darlene. “It is hard going through a heart attack as a young person. I felt like people were judging me, like I must have a really unhealthy lifestyle to have a heart attack in my thirties.”
Related: The Surprising Thing That Raises the Risk of Heart Attacks in Young Women
Depression is a huge problem for young women after a heart attack, says Tracy Stevens, M.D., a board-certified cardiologist with St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City and a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association. “They become aware of their own mortality at a young age.” Meanwhile, they are less likely to go to cardiac rehab—hospital-led programs designed to bring survivors together to get the support and skills they need to make a full recovery—than are men.
Reducing Their Risk
Both Angela and Darlene learned practical ways to improve their heart health and reduce their risk of reoccurrence.
Darlene, for one, is working to eat a heart-healthy diet and to lower her stress levels. “Stress is a big thing for me because it seems like I’m constantly stressing out about something,” she says. “It’s important to keep things in perspective because stress can be a risk factor for heart attacks.”
What’s more, since Angela was able to take six months of recovery before heading back to work full-time, she was able to undergo training to lead a support group for women who have suffered from heart attacks. She also made over her health.
Since September, she’s lost 58 pounds (going from 202 to 144!) by focusing on exercising regularly and eating healthy foods. “Now, I can say no to unhealthy foods because I know what is going to happen to me if I eat them,” she says.
“I hate saying it because a heart attack is a horrible thing, but in many respects, my life is better than it was before the heart attack,” says Angela. “I don’t know that I would have lost this much weight or gotten so serious about my health otherwise. My numbers are great now. But I still have trouble saying I have coronary artery disease…that I had a heart attack.”
Heart Attacks in Young Women: A Growing Problem
“Women between the ages of 35 and 45 are dying of heart attacks more than ever,” says Stevens. Meanwhile, 35,000 women under the age of 55 suffer from heart attacks each year in the U.S., according to the Women’s Heart Foundation. “There’s a misconception that heart attacks are for old women,” says Stevens. “Heart disease isn’t on young women’s radars. Many don’t know their blood pressure or cholesterol.”
Related: One in Four Women Will Die From Heart Disease. Everything You Need to Know About This Silent Killer.
And while Angela did know her numbers—which has led her to a lot of wrestling with feelings of blame and guilt—she didn’t know the full extent of her family’s history with heart disease, which raised her risk even further.
Meanwhile, many women don’t pay attention to the symptoms.
That’s why young women are twice as likely to die after being hospitalized for a heart attack than are men in the same age group—they simply don’t know they are having one until it’s too late, according to research from the Yale School of Public Health. Each year in the U.S., more than 15,000 women under the age of 55 die of heart disease. Luckily, Angela and Darlene eventually did go to the hospital, but it took each of them a while to realize something might actually be wrong.
Related: Why Men Get Treated for Heart Attacks Faster Than Women
Plus, doctors still even don’t know exactly what caused Darlene’s heart attack. “One of their best guesses is that a combination of birth control pills and a decongestant I had taken a day or two before,” she says.
While contraception-related heart attacks are rare, birth control pills can increase the risk of blood clots. “Meanwhile, decongestants are notorious for raising blood-pressure levels,” says Darlene. Put them together, and while a heart attack is still unlikely, it is possible.
Of far more concern than birth control is obesity and smoking. After all, obesity spurs plaque formation, birth control makes clotting easier, and nicotine makes plaque rupture. For that reason, many doctors won’t prescribe birth control to women who smoke. But that’s only if the patients ‘fess up about smoking—and many don’t.
Whatever way you cut it, though, heart disease is still the number-one health threat to women over the age of 35. Learn how to prevent heart disease now—it’s never too early.
More from Women’s Health:
Could Taking Painkillers Mess with Your Heart?
Running Crushes Your Heart Attack Risk—Even If You Do It Slowly
Researchers Confirm a Life-Saving Technique That’s Helping More People Survive Heart Attacks