Heart Attack or Panic Attack? Here's How You Can Tell the Difference
June 9, 2022
By: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare
Categories: Healthy Living
Your heart is racing, your chest tightens, you feel short of breath. You ask yourself: Am I having a heart attack? Or is it a panic attack?
In the heat of the moment, it may be difficult to tell, especially if you’ve never had either. At Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH), we often care for patients with panic attack symptoms they’ve mistaken for a heart attack or vice versa.
While heart attacks and panic attacks share some symptoms, they have distinct differences. Knowing how to tell them apart – then seeking the appropriate care – could save your life.
What Are the Symptoms of a Heart Attack?
A heart attack is a medical emergency in which part of your heart doesn’t get enough blood. This typically happens when a blockage in an artery either slows or stops the flow of oxygenated blood to your heart.
Heart attack symptoms can vary from person to person. Some will have intense, debilitating symptoms, while others may have mild symptoms. Men and women tend to present differently, too.
Common heart attack symptoms include:
- Chest pain or discomfort that feels like an uncomfortable tightness, pressure, squeezing, crushing, fullness or pain and lasts more than a few minutes or comes and goes.
- Feeling weak, light-headed or faint.
- Nausea or vomiting.
- Pain or discomfort in the jaw, back or neck.
- Pain or discomfort in one or both arms or shoulders, particularly on the left side.
- Shortness of breath.
The most common heart attack symptom in men and women is chest pain, but the pain is often less intense in women. Women often experience heart attack symptoms unrelated to chest pain, including neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or upper abdomen discomfort, sweating, unusual fatigue or a feeling like heartburn.
Because heart attacks slow or stop the flow of oxygenated blood to your brain, minutes matter. If you are having heart attack symptoms or think you are having a heart attack, call 911 immediately.
What Are the Symptoms of a Panic Attack?
A panic attack is a sudden but brief episode of overwhelming anxiety and physical sensations of fear. Panic attacks happen when your fight or flight response is activated; your body prepares to protect you from a threat based solely on perception.
While panic attacks are not life-threatening, they can be mentally and emotionally debilitating. Some of the physical symptoms may even feel like you’re having a heart attack, which can cause you to panic more.
Common panic attack symptoms include:
- Feeling of losing control.
- Fear that you’re dying.
- Accelerated or pounding heartbeat.
- Sweating.
- Trembling or shaking.
- Throat tightness or feeling like you’re choking.
- Shortness of breath.
- Chest pain.
- Nausea.
- Dizziness.
- An out-of-body sensation.
- Tingling sensation throughout your body or numbness in your hands, arms, feet or legs.
Panic attacks usually pass within a few minutes, at most an hour. However, you may feel exhausted or drained for hours afterward. Focusing on your breath and recognizing that the episode will pass can help.
How to Tell the Difference
The overlap in heart attack and panic attack symptoms can be confusing. Here are some key ways to tell them apart:
- Sensation: With heart attacks, chest pain tends to feel like a tightness, crushing or squeezing. Some people describe it like an elephant sitting on your chest. It can also feel like heartburn. Chest pain with a panic attack is more likely to feel like a sharp or stabbing pain. You may also feel heart palpitations or like your heart is racing.
- Location: Heart attack chest pain usually starts in the chest and radiates to other areas like the arm, neck or jaw. Meanwhile, chest pain related to a panic attack tends to stay in the chest.
- Triggers: Heart attacks often occur after physical exertion, like mowing your lawn or exercising. Unless exercise is an emotional trigger for you, you’re unlikely to have a panic attack caused by physical exertion.
- Timing: While panic attacks and heart attacks can happen in the middle of the night, nighttime panic attacks will almost always impact people who also have daytime panic attacks. If you’ve never had a panic attack and are awoken by chest pain or some of the other symptoms above, it could be a heart attack.
- Length: Panic attacks are fleeting. Heart attacks do not go away. The intensity of your symptoms may ebb and flow, but they won’t disappear.
Still Not Sure?
If you or a loved one are experiencing these symptoms and are not sure whether it’s a heart attack or panic attack, err on the side of caution. Heart attacks are emergencies that require immediate, life-saving medical care. Seek help immediately.
To learn about TMH’s top accredited Chest Pain Center, visit TMH.ORG/Heart.
To learn about TMH’s mental health services for patients with anxiety disorders, visit TMH.ORG/MentalHealth.
Heather Lincicome, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker and Administrator of the Tallahassee Memorial Behavioral Health Center. Heather also serves as Chief Liaison Officer for Apalachee Center.
William C. Dixon, MD is an interventional cardiologist at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and Southern Medical Group. Dr. Dixon serves as Medical Director for TMH’s Chest Pain Center.
