Although there are some significant heart attack prevention efforts being made, Dr. Aarush Manchanda stresses the need to understand what a heart attack is and what alarming symptoms they may cause.

What Causes a Heart Attack?

Using the heart house analogy which he’s developed in his book, Your Heart House, Dr. Manchanda describes a heart attack as a “plumbing” problem, which, when it’s severe, can lead to a “wall” problem.

If you started blocking up the pipes in your home and allowed the blockage to progress, physics tells us that once the blockage is at 80 percent, there’s going to be an obstruction to the flow because there’s enough friction to cause this.

This is exactly the same in our hearts, except there’s no toilet paper causing this blockage! Instead, in the heart, once the blockage in the artery reaches 80 percent, people will be at great risk of suffering from a heart attack or angina.

In your home, if you didn’t remove this blockage, the walls may become damp, which will cause all of the wires behind them to short-circuit. The same applies to the heart, because once the blockage reaches 100 percent, it can stop blood flowing, which will again cause the wires behind it to start shorting. It is this that leads to a cardiac arrest, and we all know that the worst time to have one of these is when you’re playing charades!

However, this does mean that people who originally had a blockage in their plumbing can also suffer from short-circuits in their walls, which can prove even more fatal.

What are the Symptoms of a Heart Attack?

Dr. Manchanda describes some of the alarming symptoms that people can experience when they’re having a heart attack. These include:

• Acute crushing chest pains, which can radiate into the shoulder blade
• Chest pains that go up into your jaw and down your left arm
• Sweating
• A feeling of impending doom (and not just because your mother-in-law is coming to visit!)
• Feeling dizzy
• Going light-headed
• Feeling like you’re going to pass out

Some may also start to feel that their heart is beating faster than it’s supposed to, and this isn’t because they’ve just been looking at pictures of Justin Bieber.

All of these symptoms need to be taken seriously and people should call 911 if they experience these, getting to the closest hospital emergency room as quickly as possible.