What Does Heartburn Feel Like?

What does heartburn feel like? a friend woke up because he felt a sharp pain in his chest in the middle of the night. It was so painful that he had trouble breathing, since every breath caused his chest to move and gave him even more pain. He felt so awful, he woke up his wife and made her drive him to the emergency room at 2 AM. After the doctors checked him up thoroughly and put him through an EKG, they sent him home with a bottle of antacids and a prescription for a “heartburn diet.”  The situation may have been downright embarrassing for him but he swears he never wants to feel pain like that ever again.

Most people that feel it for the first time think they’re experiencing heart failure. What does heartburn feel like, then? Like my friend described, the pain was so bad that it woke him up from a very deep sleep. It was in his chest, which made him worry even more. It didn’t go away immediately, like the majority of acid attacks do, but lasted several hours.  But a heart attack, while painful, doesn’t feel that way. There is a constricting feeling in the chest, a mounting pressure that makes it difficult to breathe, but not painful. There may be a painful, weighty feeling on the shoulders, neck, or arms, too.  The breathless feeling causes dizziness, sweating, or nausea. They turn pale, have cold, sweaty skin, and an increased heart rate.

If you feel pains in your chest, make an appointment with your doctor and get to him as soon as you can. It may be embarrassing to ask, “What does heartburn feel like?” but it’s a question you should know the answers to. Your doctor will definitely put you through the whole rigamarole of a check-up from lifestyle and personal habits to your blood pressure, blood tests, and putting you through the EKG.

Once the EKG gives you a clean bill of health, the doctor could zero in on heartburn as the main cause for your pains. Now that your question as to what does heartburn feel like is answered, you may very gladly accept all the doctor’s suggestions for you. Some medications like antacids and proton pump inhibitors may be prescribed but the main bulk of the suggestions would require a change in lifestyle, like cutting down, or out, on caffeine, alcohol, and cigarettes, and switching to a low-fat, low-acid diet.

Heartburn is definitely treatable and is a condition that is easily preventable, depending on how much action the sufferer is willing to take! Our “modern” lifestyle is the root of the problem here. Even just our habit of crunching down over the desk compresses our abdomen and where is the acid supposed to go? Why, up, of course.

What about children? Should they, of all people, be asking “What does heartburn feel like?” There are incidents of ‘child stress’ because children love to emulate their elders. So, late nights on the computer compounded with a staple diet of spice, oily pizza, fatty burgers and fries, and the ubiquitous super-sized glass of soda allow the child to feel all the ‘joys of adult living.’ So, if you have to ask “What does heartburn feel like,” then take that as a warning sign that you must change your diet, tweak your lifestyle, and get yourself on the road towards better health.