Health & Fitness

This article was previously published June 21, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

Here, I interview three vitamin D experts about the importance of vitamin D for improving your immune function and resistance to viral infections of all kinds, including COVID-19.

Bruce Hollis, Ph.D., with the Medical University of South Carolina, has researched vitamin D since the late 1970s. His research associate at the Medical University of South Carolina is Dr. Carol Wagner, who is a neonatologist and has been researching vitamin D since 2000.

Carole Baggerly is the director and founder of GrassrootsHealth Nutrient Research Institute, a nonprofit public health research organization dedicated to moving public health messages regarding vitamin D from research into practice. Baggerly received our Game Changer Award in 2018. She started her work in vitamin D after treatment for breast cancer in 2005.

Vitamin D Levels Correlate With Disease Severity

GrassrootsHealth conducted a review of an observational study involving 212 patients in Southeast Asia who had COVID-19, identifying a correlation between vitamin D levels and disease severity. Those with the mildest disease had the highest vitamin D levels, and vice versa.

Of the 212 people, 49 had mild disease; 59 had ordinary disease; 56 were severe and 48 were critical. In the initial study group of 212 patients (see Table 1 below), 55 had normal vitamin D levels, which was defined as greater than 30 ng/ml; 80 had insufficient levels of 21 to 29 ng/ml and 77 had deficient levels of less than 20 ng/ml.

Now, it's worth noting that the "optimal" vitamin D level in that study was set at 30 nanograms per milliliter (30 ng/mL), which may actually be suboptimal. According to the research done by GrassrootsHealth, 40 ng/mL is the lower edge of optimal, with 60 ng/mL to 80 ng/mL being ideal for health and disease prevention. Despite that, the benefit of having a vitamin D level above 30 ng/mL was clear.

Vitamin D Levels Correlate With Mortality Risk

A second study looked at the data from 780 hospital patients in Indonesia. The same vitamin D level cutoffs were used in this study: below 20 ng/mL; between 20 ng/mL and 30 ng/mL; and above 30 ng/mL.

After adjusting for confounding factors, those with a vitamin D level between 20 ng/mL and 30 ng/mL had a sevenfold higher risk of death than those with a level above 30 ng/mL. Having a level below 20 ng/mL was associated with a 12 times higher risk of death. As noted by Hollis, "That's really strong data."

It's Your Vitamin D Blood Level That Matters, Not the Dose

Now, many vitamin D studies conclude that vitamin D supplementation has little or no effect on any given health problem or condition. But there's a very simple reason for this: Virtually every one of these studies use the same dosage or dosages for everyone, and do not measure participants' blood levels.

This is a crucial mistake, as it's really the blood level that needs to get over a particular threshold, and the dosage required to get there can vary widely. Another problem is the fact that most studies use far too low a dosage. If the dosage is too low, you cannot get your blood level into the protective range, and thus it will appear as though vitamin D is useless.

A third factor that can influence the outcome of vitamin D studies is the interaction between vitamin D and other nutrients. Competing deficiencies can affect a particular sub cohort or population, thereby obfuscating results.

A fourth factor is how you define deficiency — using a "word" versus a serum level. For the GrassrootsHealth Scientists' Panel of 48 researchers, the consensus is that minimum serum level should be 40 ng/ml (100 nmol/L). Wagner explains:

"If you do a PubMed search, you see literally thousands of articles. You see this really rich basic science information that's been accumulating in the last two decades, that strongly supports vitamin D's role in immunity.

But then, when randomized control trials are done, there are some that suggest vitamin D is effective and others say no. It's been a contentious issue and I'm sure Bruce and Carole [Baggerly] will agree with me that doing nutrients studies is not the same as doing a pharma study where … they start with zero as their baseline.

[When it comes to] vitamin D [levels], everybody is different. And so, using a biomarker, which is what we use in our studies, total circulating 25(OH)D is a much better indicator."

Hollis adds:

"In nutrient studies with vitamin D, it's always been the dosage — how much you're going to give — with no concern about what the attained blood levels would be.

In our studies, of course, we always measure blood levels. Those studies that Carol [Wagner] and I carried out in pregnancy (in 2003), they were monitored by the FDA. We had to get an investigational drug number (IDN) to run these studies, and it was unheard of to have to do that …

In the end, we proved the [dosage] we [gave] — 4,000 units — was totally harmless as far as dosing went. But it's still a fight … We have yet to see one adverse event due to vitamin D in any of the studies that Carol [Wagner] and I have carried out, not a single one …"

Laws Need Updating

Unfortunately, with labeling laws the way they are, it's very difficult to get this point across. As noted by Baggerly:

"GrassrootsHealth … [asked] the FDA … for the ability to be able to print on the [label of] any vitamin D supplement that '[Vitamin D] may help have a healthy pregnancy and [improve] birth outcomes.' What we were told in that meeting by the FDA person was, 'According to what dose?'

We explained repeatedly that it wasn't a dose, it was a serum level, and the FDA person in charge said, 'By law, we can only accept recommendations based on dose, and if you can't provide us with a dose, we cannot accept any recommendation.' So, the laws are out of date, to say the least."

Skin Color Impacts Your Vitamin D Deficiency Risk

The color of your skin has correlations to your vitamin D level, and we're also seeing racial disparities in COVID-19. As noted by Hollis, in Detroit, Michigan, where African-Americans account for 14% of the population, they accounted for 40% of COVID-19 deaths.¹

"It was even worse in Sweden where the Somali population is less than 1%, and they [account for] 40% of the deaths," Hollis says. "In Britain, of the 24 health care physicians who have died, 23 were people of color. It was so bad that they pulled those people off the front lines … the physicians and the nurses." 

Vitamin D deficiency likely plays a role in this racial disparity, although nutrition, obesity and diabetes rates also contribute to immune dysfunction. It's important for people with darker skin to realize that the more melanin you have, the more sun exposure you require to make sufficient amounts of vitamin D.

According to Hollis, it's physiologically impossible for a dark-skinned individual in the United States, unless they're in Southern Florida or Hawaii, to get optimal vitamin D from typical sun exposure.

Daily Supplementation May Strengthen Lung Tissue

If for whatever reason you cannot get regular sun exposure, then vitamin D supplementation is advisable. Ideally, you'll want to take it daily, opposed to taking a large bolus dose once a week or once a month. As noted by Hollis, studies have consistently shown only daily supplementation were effective.

"When they looked at bolus supplementation, the effect on respiratory infection disappeared," he says. "Taking a bolus dose every other week or once a month, every three months, that was not effective at controlling respiratory infections. So, we prefer daily [supplementation]."

Baggerly adds:

"The vitamin D component produced in the skin as a result of sun exposure is at one stage what we take as a supplement, the D3, and that then is metabolized into 25(OH)D, which is what we're measuring, for the most part.

The D3 and even the 25(OH)D have been considered in times past … as not being active … In recent studies, and we really are talking relatively recent, the D3 itself seems to be active in helping keep the epithelia strong [to prevent endothelial leakage]."

Vitamin D3's ability to strengthen the endothelial structure of the lungs may be one way in which vitamin D helps protect against COVID-19. "COVID-19 attacks the lungs … and vitamin D in this model showed to stabilize that," Hollis says.

Vitamin D Strengthens and Regulates Immune Function

Vitamin D also has a clear effect on your innate immune system, which is your first line of defense against bacteria and viruses, as well as your adaptive immune system, which involves your T regulatory helper and suppressor cells, and natural killer cells.

All of these need to be in balance, Wagner explains. If an imbalance occurs, you can end up with a cytokine storm. According to Wagner, vitamin D is very effective for regulating and balancing adaptive immunity. One example demonstrating the elegance of this system is pregnancy. Wagner explains:

"You go from a very active immune system where you have, as the egg is fertilized, an invasion into the uterine wall. You have to allow for that, [and] it's a very pro-inflammatory state. Then, in order to allow fetal growth, you have to have quiescence of that [proinflammatory state].

You see shifts in the T cell populations, the phenotypes, as well as in the monocyte macrophage population, their activity. And then, at the time of delivery, you shift back to a proinflammatory state [when you] go into labor and have expulsion of the fetus and the placenta. So, it's a tremendously elegant process.

We know that when it's deranged, we get such conditions as preeclampsia. You get a vasculitis throughout the body and it can lead to death of both the mother and the fetus, and you have a cytokine storm during that. So COVID-19 is not like a foreign alien; it's utilizing the very immune system that we have in our body and it makes sense.

Even though this particular virus is new, it's incorporating systems within our body that are ancient and that includes a very ancient pre-pro hormone, which is vitamin D.

So, it makes sense to me, as a physician and as a scientist, that those individuals who have balance in their bodies, and in this case vitamin D balance, they're going to do better than if they had deficiency [because then] they can't mobilize those [immune] cells. Those cells are going to be dysfunctional."

Research has also demonstrated that pregnant women with optimal vitamin D levels significantly reduce their child's risk of developing Type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disorder. As noted by Baggerly:

"We're working with the Diabetes Research Center to see whether, even after the child is born, as long as they don't have full-blown type 1 diabetes, what can we do to help stop it? And it turns out that the combination of vitamin D and omega-3 really matters."

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A novel, disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's disease may involve the whole exchange of blood, which effectively decreased the formation of amyloid plaque in the brains of mice, according to a new study.

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A new mouse model might revolutionize development of therapies targeting brain inflammation caused by Rift Valley Fever virus.

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Our brain links incoming speech sounds to knowledge of grammar, which is abstract in nature. But how does the brain encode abstract sentence structure? In a neuroimaging study, researchers report that the brain encodes the structure of sentences ('the vase is red') and phrases ('the red vase') into different neural firing patterns.

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In this revealing interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com, David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population.¹

In March 2022, Martin filed a federal lawsuit against President Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services alleging that COVID-19 shots turn the body into a biological weapons factory, manufacturing spike protein. Not only is the term "vaccination" misleading when referring to COVID-19 shots, it's inaccurate since they are actually a form of gene therapy.²

"And we are not only not going to be sued for, you know, any libel or misinformation, we are actually holding people criminally accountable for their domestic terrorism, their crimes against humanity and the story of the coronavirus weaponization that goes back to 1998," Martin says.³

SARS-CoV-2 Has Been in the Works for Decades

Martin has been in the business of tracking patent applications and approvals since 1998. His company, M-Cam International Innovation Risk Management, is the world's largest underwriter of intangible assets used in finance in 168 countries. M-Cam has also monitored biological and chemical weapons treaty violations on behalf of the U.S. government, following the anthrax scare in September 2001.⁴

According to Martin, there are more than 4,000 patents relating to the SARS coronavirus. His company has also done a comprehensive review of the financing of research involving the manipulation of coronaviruses that gave rise to SARS as a subclade of the beta coronavirus family.

Much of the research was funded by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci.⁵ Martin explained:⁶

"I think it's important for your listeners and viewers to remember that it was 1999 when Anthony Fauci and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill decided to start weaponizing coronavirus they patented in 2002 — and you heard that date correctly, that's a year before the SARS outbreak in China.

The first time they patented what they called an 'infectious replication defective chimera' of coronavirus. And let's unpack what that means.

Infectious means that it actually is more lethal to the target. Replication defective means its damage is primarily to the target and not to the target's family or friends or community or anything else. And in 2002, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill patented the replication defective infectious coronavirus chimera, which then became the first instance of SARS.

And it was perfected in 2013 to 2016 during the gain of function moratorium, where the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was given an exemption from the gain of function moratorium so they could continue to weaponize the virus to the point where in 2016, Ralph Baric published a paper in which he said the Wuhan Institute of Virology virus one, coronavirus, was 'poised for human emergence,' so they knew this all along.

You know, they knew it was a bioweapon since 2005. They knew it was effective at taking out populations, harming populations, intimidating and coercing populations. And they did that all very intentionally for the purpose of destroying humanity."

COVID-19 Shots Are an 'Act of Bioterrorism'

According to Martin, the spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a computer simulation of a chimera of the spike protein of coronavirus. "It is, in fact, not a coronavirus vaccine. It is a spike protein instruction to make the human body produce a toxin, and that toxin has been scheduled as a known biologic agent of concern with respect to biological weapons for the last now decade and a half," he said.⁷

Rather than being a public health measure as they were widely campaigned to be, COVID-19 shots are an act of bioweapons and bioterrorism. Martin shared that in 2015, Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance that funneled research dollars from the NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for coronavirus research, stated:⁸

"We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage, to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process."

Daszak, who Martin refers to as "the money launderer in chief," "actually stated that this entire exercise was a campaign of domestic terror to get the public to accept the universal vaccine platform using a known biological weapon. And that is their own words, not my interpretation," Martin said.⁹

Martin: 100 Million May Die Due to COVID Shots

Both Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 shots contain nucleic acid sequences that are not part of nature and have not been previously introduced to the human body. This amounts to a genetic engineering experiment that did not go through animal studies or clinical trials.

However, already people are dying from the shots and, Martin states, "many more will" due to issues such as blood clots, damage to the cardiovascular system and problems with liver, kidney and pulmonary function.¹⁰

An onslaught of reproductive and cancer cases related to the shots are also anticipated. "The fact of the matter is an enormous number of people who are injected are already carrying the seeds of their own demise," Martin said.¹¹ As for how many may die, Martin believes the numbers may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their "decade of vaccination":¹²

"Based on their own 2011 estimate, and … this is a chilling estimate, but we just have to put it out there … When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chinese CDC, the Jeremy Farrar Wellcome Trust and others published The Decade of Vaccination for the World Health Organization back in 2011 their stated objective was a population reduction of 15% of the world's population.

Put that in perspective, that's about 700 million people dead … and that would put the U.S. participation in that certainly as a pro rata of injected population somewhere between 75 and 100 million people."

When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested "there's a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it's between now and 2028."¹³ This is because of "a tiny little glitch on the horizon" — the projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028.

"So the fewer people who are recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the better," Martin said. "Not surprisingly, it's probably one of the motivations that led to the recommendation that people over the age of 65 were the first ones getting injected."¹⁴ Other populations at risk are caregivers, including health care providers, and others in the workforce who were forced to be injected, such as pilots.

"Why is it that we're suddenly having 700 flights a day being canceled because, allegedly, airlines don't have pilots? … the dirty secret … is there a lot of pilots who are having microvascular problems and clotting problems, and that keeps them out of the cockpit, which is a good place to not have them if they're going to throw a clot for a stroke or a heart attack," Martin said.

"But the problem is we're going to start seeing that exact same phenomenon in the health care industry and at a much larger scale, which means we now have, in addition to the problem of the actual morbidity and mortality, meaning people getting sick and people dying.

We actually have that targeting the health care industry writ large, which means we are going to have doctors and nurses who are going to be among the sick and the dead. And that means that the sick and the dying also do not get care."¹⁵

Why COVID Shots May Change Your DNA

It's been stressed by the media and public health officials that COVID-19 shots do not alter DNA. However, Martin brings attention to a little-known grant from the National Science Foundation, known as Darwinian chemical systems,¹⁶ which involved research to incorporate mRNA into targeted genomes. According to Martin:¹⁷

"Moderna was started … on the back of a 10-year National Science Foundation grant. And that grant was called Darwinian chemical systems … the project that gave rise to the Moderna company itself was a project where they were specifically figuring out how to get mRNA to write itself into the genome of whatever target they were going after.

That could be a single-celled organism, it could be a multi-celled organism or it could be a human. And the fact of the matter is Moderna was started on the back of having proven that mRNA can be transfected and write itself into the human genome."

It is completely unknown what the short- or long-term effects of the spike protein analog that's inside people who received COVID-19 injections will be. But with respect to alteration of the genome, Martin states that data show mRNA has the capacity to write into the DNA of humans, and "as such, the long-term effects are not going to merely be symptomatic. The long-term effects are going to be the human genome of injected individuals is going to be altered."¹⁸

Fraud Removes Big Pharma's Liability Shield

The 2001 anthrax attack, which came out of medical and defense research, led to the passage of the PREP Act, which removed liability for manufacturers of emergency medical countermeasures.

This means that as long as the U.S. is under a state of emergency, things like COVID-19 "vaccines" are allowed under emergency use authorization. And as long as the emergency use authorization is in effect, the makers of these experimental gene therapies are not financially liable for any harm that comes from their use.

That is, provided they're "vaccines." If these injections are NOT vaccines, then the liability shield falls away, because there is no liability shield for a medical emergency countermeasure that is gene therapy. Further, lawsuits that can prove the companies engaged in fraud will also negate the liability shield. Martin states:¹⁹

"One of the convenient things about the PREP Act is the immunity shield from liability actually is only as good as the absence of fraud. Because if there was fraud in the promulgation of the events, leading to an emergency use authorization, then all of the immunity shield gets wiped out.

So the reason why it is so important for conversations like the one we're having to actually be promoted and be advanced is because the pharmaceutical companies — and this includes Pfizer and Moderna and J&J — know they are perpetuating a fraud. The great thing about this is when that fraud is established, 100% of the liability flows back to them.

… when a fraud was the basis for a fraud, then we actually have a number of other legal remedies that allow you to pierce that veil. So in the end, there's no question … and it's quite evident based on the current mortality and morbidity data that given the fact that when it comes to biological weapons and bioterror each count comes with $100 million penalty. That's what the federal statute gives us.

The penalty for corporate domestic terrorism, when you have per count $100 million a pop liabilities — that is an existential threat that takes a company like Pfizer or takes a company like Moderna out of existence. And that is what we're working for every day."

If you'd like to follow the progress of the ongoing legal cases seeking to expose the truth — that a criminal organization is seeking to obtain control over the global population via the creation of patented bioweapons marketed as novel viruses and injections — you can find all the details at ProsecuteNow.io, a website compiled by Martin and colleagues.²⁰

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This article was previously published March 2, 2019, and has been updated with new information.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,¹ nearly 805,000 Americans have a heart attack each year, and 605,000 are first heart attacks. When you learn the risk factors, symptoms and how to take early action, it increases your chances of survival.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, some who suffered a heart attack did not act quickly enough to make it to the hospital on time.² Delaying treatment can be deadly, so it's important to learn the warning signs.

While chest pain is the single most common sign for many women, women are also more likely than men to have symptoms other than chest pain when experiencing a heart attack.

What Is a Heart Attack?

Your heart is an extraordinary organ that can function even when detached from your body as long as it is supplied with an adequate amount of oxygen. It works relentlessly to pump blood throughout your body, so it is crucial the muscle receives enough oxygenated blood and nutrients or it can die.

Your heart beats nearly 100,000 times every day and pumps nearly 1 million barrels of blood in an average lifetime. This is enough blood to fill more than three supertankers. One way your heart may experience a loss of blood supply is if there is plaque buildup in your arteries, blocking the flow to your heart.

Heart attack can also happen when blood supply is affected by narrowed heart arteries, commonly known as ischemic heart disease. Although sometimes used interchangeably, a heart attack and cardiac arrest are two different occurrences. Sudden, unexpected cardiac arrest is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.,³ but it is different from a heart attack.

The most immediate and recognizable difference is that a heart attack victim will remain conscious with their heart beating, while someone who suffers a sudden cardiac arrest will be unconscious with no discernible heartbeat.

While a heart attack affects the oxygen supply to the heart muscle, cardiac arrest affects the electrical impulses. During a heart attack, part of the heart may have a reduction in oxygen supply if the blood is restricted, but the remaining areas of the muscle will continue to beat.

During a cardiac arrest, the electrical system is impacted by physical conditions, such as cardiomyopathy, heart failure or arrhythmias. A heart attack will also increase your risk of having a sudden cardiac arrest since the loss of oxygen supply will affect the electrical system in the heart.

This is perhaps the most common reason for a sudden cardiac arrest.⁴ In other words, loss of oxygen to the heart muscle from a heart attack affects the electrical impulses and may trigger a cardiac arrest.

What Increases Your Risk of Heart Attack?

Although there are stories of people who have a heart attack even when they eat right and exercise, these are the exception rather than the rule. The fact is, no matter how perfectly you eat or how fit you are, there's no guarantee you'll remain heart attack free. Women's Health Magazine shares the stories of five young women and the unusual symptoms they had while suffering a heart attack.⁵

In a study of over 88,000 women ages 27 to 44 years in the Nurse's Health Study II, researchers documented 456 cases of coronary heart disease. They found women who adhered to six guidelines lowered their risk of heart disease by 92%. Based on this information, the researchers extrapolated more than 70% of heart attacks could be prevented if individuals implemented:⁶

• A healthy diet
• Normal body mass index (BMI)
• Getting at least 2.5 hours of exercise each week and watching television seven or fewer hours per week
• Avoiding smoking
• Limiting alcohol to one drink or less per day

Although researchers measured BMI, it should be noted your waist-to-hip ratio is a more reliable risk predictor as it is a greater reflection of visceral fat. The results of this study also support results from a study published the previous year, which concluded the same health habits could prevent 79% of first-time heart attacks in men.^7,8

To this I would add maintaining a healthy iron level is important for your heart, as various studies show that both iron deficiency and iron overload⁹ can be a significant risk factor for heart attack. To that end, excess iron is a more common problem than you may think when it comes to affecting your heart.

For example, a Scandinavian study in Finland¹⁰ found elevated ferritin levels raised men's risk of heart attack two- to threefold. Another¹¹ found elevated ferritin doubled the risk of a fatal heart attack at 2.18, while women with high levels were five times more likely (5.53) to have a fatal heart attack.

Stress Influences Your Heart Health

Stress has an enormous impact on your health. While acute stress is a life-saving biological function enabling you to instinctively square off against an assailant, run away from a predator or take down prey, chronic stress activating the same biological reaction over long periods of time can cause your body to marinate in corrosive hormones around the clock, and has serious consequences.

Chronic stress may lead to the accumulation of stubborn fat, high blood pressure and heart attacks. It increases inflammation in your body and activates your sympathetic nervous system, suppressing your parasympathetic system.

In one study,¹² researchers found young and middle-aged women have a harder time recovering after a heart attack than men. They theorized this may be due to the stress of carrying multiple roles. Women are also twice as likely as men to die within the first two weeks following a heart attack.¹³

Data have demonstrated a link between bouts of intense anger with an 8.5fold higher risk of experiencing a heart attack in the following two hours.¹⁴ Stress also increases your risk of heart attack by triggering over activity in your amygdala, activated in response to real and perceived threat. Researchers¹⁵ measured nearly 300 participants over the age of 30, none with a diagnosed heart problem.

Participants were observed over two to five years, during which 22 experienced a serious cardiac event. Based on brain scans, the researchers conclude those with higher levels of activity in the amygdala were at an elevated risk of a cardiac event.

In short, people who are highly stressed have a higher activity in the amygdala, which in turn increases inflammation, a risk factor for heart disease. While not concrete proof of causation, activation of the amygdala can trigger arterial inflammation by triggering immune cell production in the bone marrow.

Stress can also trigger a heart attack by raising your levels of disease promoting white blood cells, leading to atherosclerosis, plaque rupture and myocardial infarction.¹⁶ The release of norepinephrine during high-stress events can also cause the dispersal of bacterial biofilms within the walls of your arteries, allowing plaque deposits to break loose, thereby triggering a heart attack.

Symptoms of Heart Attack

When a heart attack starts, blood flow to your heart has suddenly become blocked and the muscle can't get oxygen. If not treated quickly, the muscle fails to pump and begins to die. While often a result of coronary heart disease, a blockage in an artery of the heart can occur following clot formation. Some of the most common symptoms of a heart attack include:¹⁷

Chest pain or discomfort	Upper body discomfort
Shortness of breath	Breaking out in a cold sweat
Nausea	Sudden dizziness
Feeling unusually tired	Lightheadedness

However, while it's important to know the common signs of a heart attack, not all heart attacks begin with a sudden crushing chest pain as you might have seen on TV or in the movies. Symptoms can vary from person to person and some may have very few symptoms, especially women.¹⁸

Many Women Mistake Heart Attack Symptoms as Anxiety or Stress

Importantly, research^19,20 shows women are less likely to report chest pain when having a heart attack. According to the authors, compared to men, "women were more likely to perceive symptoms as stress/anxiety (20.9% versus 11.8%) but less likely to attribute symptoms to muscle pain (15.4% versus 21.2%)."

They were also more likely to use terms such as "pressure," "tightness" or "discomfort" in the chest rather than referring to it as chest pain. A significantly greater number of women also reported that their doctor did not think their symptoms were heart-related. Overall, 53% of female heart attack patients reported this, compared to just 37% of men.

Nearly 30% of women had actually sought medical help prior to being hospitalized with a heart attack, compared to just 22% of men. What these findings suggest is that both women and their doctors tend to misdiagnose or dismiss symptoms of heart attack, placing them at increased risk of death than men. As noted by the authors:

"The presentation of [acute myocardial infarction] symptoms was similar for young women and men, with chest pain as the predominant symptom for both sexes. Women presented with a greater number of additional non-chest pain symptoms regardless of the presence of chest pain, and both women and their health care providers were less likely to attribute their prodromal symptoms to heart disease in comparison with men."

Unfortunately, the absence of chest discomfort is a strong predictor of diagnosis and treatment delays.²¹ For this reason, it's important to remember there are many other symptoms that might indicate a heart attack in progress, including the following:²²

Anxiety attack	Back pain
Heartburn	Hot flashes
Extreme fatigue	Feeling electric shocks down on the left side
Numbness and stiffness in the left arm and neck	Feeling like they had a large pill stuck in their throat

Quick Action Saves Lives

Some of the more uncommon symptoms of a heart attack may lead you to believe you aren't having a heart attack. Even if you're not sure you're having a heart attack, if you experience any of these symptoms, it is vital you call for immediate emergency care, as time is of the essence. Acting quickly can save your life.

Using an ambulance is the best and safest way to get to the hospital as emergency personnel can start life-saving treatments before reaching the hospital emergency room and those who arrive by ambulance often receive faster treatment upon arrival.

Emergency medical personnel would much rather treat you in the emergency room for a nonlife-threatening condition then have you die because you were unwilling to go to the emergency room for treatment. You and your family should work out action steps to take should a heart attack occur so there are no questions of what to do.

During a routine office visit, talk to your health care provider about your risks and keep important information with you in case of an emergency. For instance, write down all medications and supplements you're taking on a card and laminate it, keeping it in your wallet or purse.

Three Underlying Causes of Heart Attacks

While blocked arteries is the conventional explanation for why heart attacks occur, there's plenty of evidence refuting that notion. In his 2004 book, "The Etiopathogenesis of Coronary Heart Disease,"²³ the late Dr. Giorgio Baroldi wrote that the largest study done on heart attack incidence revealed only 41% of people who have a heart attack actually have a blocked artery, and of those, 50% of the blockages occur after the heart attack, not prior to it.

This means at least 80% of heart attacks are not associated with blocked arteries at all. According to Dr. Thomas Cowan, a practicing physician, founding board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of "Human Heart, Cosmic Heart," three of the core, underlying issues that cause heart attacks are:

Simple Steps May Reduce Your Risk

Taking simple steps to change your diet and lifestyle may have a significant impact on your risk for a heart attack. It is important to quit smoking and reduce your alcohol intake to protect your heart. Here are several more strategies to reduce your risk.

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