Expert: David Richardson - 11/9/2009

Question
Hello,
I am a 21 year old female weighing between 122-126 lbs and am 5 foot 4. I have been a pretty active and healthy individual and have a fit body but do have family history of diabetes high blood pressure and stroke. I am emailing regarding this weird heart spasm i get occasionally. It will come all of a sudden when I am inhaling and it will feel as if someone is squeezing my heart or poking through it with a knife. After a few seconds it will go away and my left arm will regain its motility. One day it occurred for about 1 full minute and I was in excruciating pain and could not move my left arm. I grabbed onto someone next to me and squeezed their arm until the pain subsided. Is this something I need to worry about? Should I get checked out?

Answer
Dear  Shannae Ferguson,

The most common cause of pain in a young person is cramping of the muscles in the chest wall.  If you can modify the pain, make it better or worse, by pressing on the area that hurts, then you have proven that the pain is coming from your chest wall.  Chest wall pain is a nuisance but no threat to life or health.  At age below 45, chest pain is very unlikely to come from clogging of the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart. A few people get chest pain from congenital heart disease that causes trouble in mid-life, though this is unlikely in someone with good exercise ability.  If pressure on the painful area does not modify the pain, ask your doctor to consider an echocardiogram to be sure that your heart's structure and function are normal.

Please write back if this note doesn't answer all your questions.

David Richardson