Angina

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ANGINA

The pain fleetingly brushes the left side of your jaw and disappears. A few days later, it flutters along your collarbone, then drifts down into your left arm. A month after that, it resurfaces as a pressing sensation near the centre of your chest. The problem? Angina

Oxygenate your heart

Sit down

Medication or no, your first response to angina should be to sit down and relax. If you're having an arterial spasm, it will subside in a minute or two and release it's grip on your artery. Sitting down reduces the work load on your heart and should relieve the pain.

Target cholesterol

Following a program aimed at lowering cholesterol can also head off angina triggered by arterial spasms.

Leave smoking to the woodstove

Cigarette smoke sucks oxygen out of your blood and constricts blood vessels, trigerring angina rooted in either arterial spasm or narrowed arteries. If you're not a smoker, don't start. And if you do smoke, try your best to quit.

Slim down

Carrying extra pounds exacerbate angina. So losing excess weight can minimize angina.

De-stress

Anything that adds to your hearts workload requires aditional oxygen, which in turn can lead to angina if you are already susceptible. So any steps that you can take to help minimize stress-like delegating what you don't have time to do or learning not to overreact-can help.

Get an exercise prescription

Even though the first response to angina is rest, that doesn't mean that you should sit around when you're not actually having pain. If you have angina, your cardiologist will probably order a tread mill test to determine what kind of exercise you should get to put your heart in peak condition.