Some diseases cause terrible symptoms that a person just can't ignore, even though the disease itself may not be life threatening. Unfortunately, heart disease is often just the opposite.
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States.
A major thrust of lowering the death rate from heart disease is to educate the public about what type of symptoms to be alert for. Just because it doesn't hurt a lot doesn't mean it's not serious. Blockages in the arteries of the heart may cause pain in the chest but many people suffer instead from a sensation of mild pressure, tightness, heaviness or squeezing in the chest. In some people, the sensation feels like gas or indigestion and they assume it's their stomach when in fact it is the heart acting up. Lots of people know that symptoms from the heart can spread to the left arm but they can just as easily spread to the right arm, the neck, throat, jaw, ears, back or stomach.