The American Heart Association offers information that could potentially save your life. Men are generally more likely to experience pain localized just to the left of the breastbone or in the entire upper chest. Others have pain to the left shoulder and inside the left arm to the waist, and a common combination is pain in the mid-chest, neck and jaw. But women may not have these classic symptoms. Many warning signs associated with chest pain are similar for men and women, such as fatigue, pain at rest, shortness of breath and weakness.
Dizziness is the next most common symptom reported by women, whereas men report arm pain.
When a women's chest pain is related to her heart, the pain tends to be more vague than the type of chest pain men experience. To assess patterns of physical activity among overweight American adults trying to lose weight, and to estimate the proportion who engage in leisure-time physical activity from selected demographic groups, CDC analyzed data from the 1998 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. National guidelines recommend that weight reduction should be centered around a combination of strategies that include reducing calorie intake and increasing physical activity. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's clinical guidelines and the federal dietary guidelines for Americans recommend at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most days of the week for all healthy adults. In 1998, 66.6 percent of overweight men and 62.2 percent of overweight women reported they were trying to lose weight by using physical activity.