Out of the blue I began having pains in my chest.

When I ran, when I walked, sometimes even when I sat quietly. Of course, it worried me. Women’s heart attack symptoms are different from men’s and since we’ve only begun to study them we don’t have all the information quite yet.

I started researching what we do currently know about female heart attack symptoms.

Of course, I figured I was not having symptoms of a heart attack, but I wanted to rule it out.  It was then that I started finding recent research about people like myself – people who exercised religiously, ate a clean healthy diet, had no genetic disposition for having a heart attack at a young age – yet they were having heart attacks in their 40’s.

Why?

Because stress can do that –  all by itself.

It’s not something we hear about often.

We hear about the rare 25-year-old athlete that has a heart attack, or the person who had a heart attack because he neglected his body for many years going without exercise and holding onto bad eating habits. We hear about smokers having a greater risk of heart disease. But we don’t hear too much about this new group of fit people, in the prime of a healthy life, who are at high risk.

For a significant number of years I led a high stress life.

I completed two graduate programs at once, rolled right over into being a partner in a very large start up venture, and from that went into to starting my own business. I worked 12 hour days 6-7 days a week, got very little sleep, and drank lots of coffee to get everything done. This went on for years.

They were some of the fittest years of my life, too.

I had a very tight schedule and exercise was part of it, and just like everything else in the appointment book ~ it got done. I also had a pristine diet.

As far as I was concerned, my health was taken care of.

I figured that as long I was eating healthy and sticking to my rigorous exercise schedule I was guaranteed to be free of any heart problems. But that wasn’t the case. I had no idea that despite my other healthy habits, by pushing myself to the limit for years at a time and frequently losing sleep because of it, I was increasing my risk of early death.

That was a pretty big wake up call for me.

This discovery drove me to the cardiologist to get checked out. He told me everything was fine and it was more likely a pulled chest muscle than anything else (which is also rare).

I’m glad I found out sooner rather than later

that there are a few other things we need to pay attention to, in order to take care of our hearts.

Now, I’m sharing this information with you

so you can use this information for your own good.

I can’t say that I’ve rid my life of stress.

Being a business owner and an entrepreneur is a naturally stressful path, and there are never, really, any “normal” days.  But, I’ve made significant efforts to reduce my stress whenever possible, and I look for opportunities to do so far more frequently.

Watch the video above for more information, and one more important risk factor

you should know about.  Then use this info to stay healthy.

How about you? Are you too stressed for it to be healthy? Let me know about it below.