You may be experiencing the early warning signs of blocked arteries (atherosclerosis) but you may not be associating this pain and discomfort with heart problems.

Strange though it may sound, the traditional image of a man holding his chest whilst gasping for breath is not the most common pain experience or symptom of a blocked artery sufferer, although it may be that very one that ultimately brings them into the accident and emergency department.

It is very likely that the patient has been experiencing pain and discomfort for some time but has put this down to a myriad of other possible – and less serious – illnesses.

Take the example of my husband. He had angioplasty and a stent procedure some ten years earlier and therefore convinced us all that his chest pain was not a heart problem or angina. He claimed that he of all people would recognize heart pain.

He experienced something that he was convinced was more like indigestion for some eighteen months before he finally had a massive heart attack episode which was followed up with a heart bypass operation.

Typically he would be enjoying a rich meal, for example a Chinese Meal (one of his favourites) but no sooner would he have put his knife and fork down when he would be clutching directly below his chest with one arm and wincing with the pain, which would go off after a few minutes. This would be put down to indigestion, because of the rich food followed by pain.

Another common occurrence would be at the end of the evening just before bed when it was his self imposed job to finally load and switch on the dishwasher, which involves bending to close the door of the dishwasher, he would immediately get a pain in the chest again. This would be put down to a hiatus hernia because it came on after bending.

The pain – below the centre of his sternum – would also be apparent if he undertook anything that involved stooping or bending. So plenty of antacid remedies were taken and they would, strangely, ease the pain which often would disappear within a few minutes of taking this medication.

The pain would however, very often re occur during the night and he found it easier and more comfortable to sleep propped up by some pillows but would frequently complain in the morning of pain below the sternum during the night. He would frequently take antacid medication on several occasions throughout the night.

We got to the stage where we could no longer go for walks for the simple reason that after only a few steps, the pain would come on which would be immobilizing for him for several moments.

Now I can guess what you are thinking. If my husband experienced all these symptoms for so long why didn’t you get him looked at?

Well the answer is, we did. The accident and emergency department performed an ECG on a few occasions when we had rushed there after very severe pain, but unfortunately the ECG results did not indicate a heart attack and we were advised to “take things easy” and return if the pain re-occurred. They took a blood test on one other occasion and came back with the diagnosis of “irritable-bowl syndrome” which added to our reasoning and is one of the reasons why we always put his pains down to digestive problems, and is why he was sure it was not a heart related problem.

On the final occurrence of this type of chest pain, the pain just wouldn’t go away as it had in the past. All the antacids wouldn’t shift it and he spent most of the day clutching his stomach.

He eventually gave in when a second a violent pain started to develop in his right shoulder and he allowed me to call the ambulance at 10 pm. Prior to this he had insisted that it was another bout of indigestion and flatly refused to even consider attending the hospital.

By 5 am the next day he had been transferred from our local hospital to the main hospital and was in intensive care awaiting heart bypass surgery. He suffered several very unpleasant heart attack episodes whilst in hospital awaiting surgery.

So please heed this warning.

If you are suffering from any of the above symptoms, do not delay! Get to the hospital right away.

If the symptoms are not caused by a problem with your heart then this is great news and you can relax and get the appropriate treatment, but if it is your heart, and you won’t be reading this article unless you have a suspicion that it may be, then you will be in the right place to get treatment sooner rather than later!

My husband is now fully recovered and he is as fit as a fiddle. He can once again walk without pain in his chest and – deep joy – he can enjoy his favourite Chinese food without any suffering any pain afterwards!

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You pore over the menu for the deli downstairs but nothing you can allow yourself looks that good. Sure, you could go out for fast food but there’s a meeting coming up and you don’t really want to move your car and then have to find a new parking spot when you return.

So you decide not to go out. That leaves eating in.

You look at your choices, wishing you’d had the foresight to bring something from home. There’s the vending machine in the break room, filled with plastic-wrapped, rubber-textured sandwiches, bagels, muffins and Danish. Ugh, you keep spinning the carousels, hoping that by some miracle, there will be a vegetable snack plate or something half-way decent. You narrow down your choices to a cup of noodle soup or a chicken breast sandwich.

Now you have another choice: eat something to take the edge off or power through the minutes of temptation until you are sitting in your meeting and eating is out of the question. After an hour of dreary, repetitive discussions, your hunger may have calmed down.

How you handle it each day, depends on your mood. Often, if we can get through that one tempting half hour, we’re set for the afternoon and can easily wait for our well-planned light dinner. On other days, you know in your heart that if you don’t eat something, you won’t be able to concentrate on your work because all you can think about is food while you try to conceal the embarrassment of a gurgling stomach.

On those days, take the chicken sandwich, remove the bun, and microwave the miniscule piece of chicken provided. Then cut it into tiny pieces and eat slowly with a plastic knife and fork. If you can make the pea-sized pieces last for 15 or 20 minutes, you’ll feel like you’ve actually eaten an entire meal and be on your way to a pleasant non-food-focused afternoon on a very limited caloric intake.

If you truly want to control your weight, you can do it anywhere. The key is never to eat until you’ve had a lengthy internal dialog with yourself that forces you into a full awareness of your food intake and then select the lesser of all evils and consume it as slowly as you can manage.

Even trapped in the office with nothing more than a killer vending machine, you can turn bleak choices into a self-esteem building triumph.

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