had a minor heart attack

Damn glad to heat it! Now stay on your meds, exercise, and watch your diet and perhaps you'll never have to experience the real deal!
 
Want to keep on living? It's short and sweet:
(1) Get rid of some of the stress.
(2) Get rid of most of the caffeine.
(3) Get rid of all of the nicotine!

Yeah, yeah, I know, telling somebody to quit smoking is like telling somebody to get off the crack, meth, or heroin. But there are ways if you want to bad enough.

I've been taking one regular 325mg aspirin every day for years. It's already saved my life.
 
If your hands turned blue that was one hell of an arterial spasm. I would still follow most of the general recommendations that you have received. I think it still might have been triggered by a small clot that has been dissolved by this time. You still want to take care of your arterial health and reduce your susceptibilities to blood clots.

That said, it is interesting what things can trigger an arterial spasm. I need to look around for the research article, but as I recall stage fright can be a bigger stresser than running a marathon. So if you are under severe stress and the boss steps in with a layoff notice it can really hit you hard. You need to look for a way to increase your safety margin. That might include carrying something like nitroglycerin sublingual tablets with you at all times. Nitroquick and things like it can work against that spasm.
 
I haven't found the article on stage fright I mentioned, but here are some things that might be of interest to you:

This first article is about women, but it deals a little with the peculiar issue of coronary artery spasm. You might ask yourself if you share any of these symptons (like migraines etc): http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48769-2004Aug7?language=printer

This article is about how pomegranate juice helps to counteract stress induced ischemia (blood flow restriction). http://www.pompills.com/pdf/Myocardial_Perfusion.pdf

Here's an article about how black tea reduces stress hormones: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061004173749.htm
 
I still haven't found the article that I was thinking of, but here is a link to a Yale MD candidate's dissertation that has a lot of background of research on psychological stress and acute heart problems. It doesn't mention it directly in this PDF so I thought I'd mention the author's name: Brendon Lewis Graeber.
Anyway, one lesson is to try not to get mad, that seems to be particularly hard on your heart.

http://ymtdl.med.yale.edu/theses/available/etd-06272006-121029/restricted/FINAL_THESIS.pdf
 
Stress'll kill you every time. They'll just call it something different like a heart attack or cancer, but chances are stress brought it on. All the other bad things like diet and smoking contribute as well. Read "Eat To Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. It's sold as a lose weight book but I think that's just publisher marketing, the book has everything anyone needs to know about eating the right foods for healthly living. Glad to hear you are OK for now and best of luck to all the guys who have posted with similar circumstances.:thumbup:
Good diet = less red, more green:D
 
So I was still poking around some cardiology websites looking for relevant articles (did I mention that I work on chips for implantable defibrillators?) and ran across an interesting study. It turns out that when you give up smoking it is also very important to give up smoking dope. Depending on frequency of usage you can increase your chance of dying to 300% to 400% of nonuser levels if you smoke marijuana.
 
GREAT news VTW!!! :thumbup:

Oh, and lay off the stress... it accomplishes nothing.


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Good to hear you're OK! :thumbup: Stuff like that can be very scary. Don't ignore the hints your body sends because timing is critical when your heart is involved.
 
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