Did you know you can have a heart attack without knowing it?

Women who suffer a silent heart attack are fifty percent more likely to die within a decade, while in the men the risk increases by a quarter.

A heart attack can happen without a person realising it. The silent heart attacks do not have the obvious symptoms, like chest pain or shortness of breath, but it leaves the heart scarred by muscle death. The silent heart attack is as deadly as the symptomatic heart attacks.

The attack is mostly confused with indigestion, a pulled muscle or the flu. Because most people don’t know they have had a silent heart attack, they may not receive the treatment they need to prevent another one. The next attack is likely to cause a full cardiac arrest.

While there are no symptoms, silent heart attacks can be detected by an electrocardiogram (ECG), which measures the heart’s electrical activity.

While some people feel like they have strained a muscle in their chest or their upper back, others may have jaw discomfort or prolonged and excessive fatigue that is unexplained. Those are some of the less specific symptoms for a heart attack, but ones that people may ignore or attribute to something else.

They are more common in men, but if a woman has a silent heart attack, she is more likely to die than a man.

These attacks need very aggressive treatment. It is imperative that a person closely monitors the activities of their body and explore any abnormal feelings.

One must lower cholesterol levels if they are unhealthy, lowering blood pressure, helping smokers quit, helping patients lose weight and encouraging exercise. Some patients may need blood thinners and many benefit from taking low-dose aspirin every day.

Heart diseases are by far the biggest killer worldwide – and experts believe many of these deaths occur in patients who have previously suffered a heart attack without realising it.