Here’s What Happens Inside Your Body During A Heart Attack
The term “heart attack” does not accurately describe what actually happens during one of these cardiac episodes. Rather than attacking your heart, deposits of fat are isolating your heart from the oxygenated blood it needs to keep beating.
TED-Ed shows how it works, after the fat builds up in your coronary arteries. Oxygenated blood can’t pass through and “oxygen-starved cells start to die within minutes.”
Read: Signs You’re Having a Heart Attack
According to the TED lesson from Krishna Sudhir, a heart attack often causes “crushing or vice-like” pain. “It can radiate to the left arm, jaw, back or abdomen. But it’s not always as sudden and dramatic as it is in the movies.” Some people may also feel nauseous, weak, tired or short of breath.
If you’re unsure, as many people will confuse heartburn sensations with a heart attack, the American College of Emergency Physicians describes the pain as a feeling “in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back.”
If it is a heart attack, all hope is not lost — there are lots of things doctors can do to help. In one treatment, TED-Ed explains, they can use a balloon to inflate your artery and restore the blood flow. They may even perform a more complicated procedure in which they reroute your blood.
There are also medications that could help prevent a subsequent heart attack. One of them, which opens up your arteries, is a material that is also used in dynamite. Boom.
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