
What is Angina and a Heart Attack?
Your heart is a muscle that pumps blood all around your body, but it also needs its own blood supply.
Angina is the chest pain you can get when the blood vessels feeding blood to your heart are narrowed by fatty deposits (plaques). The trickle of blood coming past the narrowing isn’t enough to feed the heart muscle, and it starts to starve.
A heart attack is when your heart’s blood vessels are so narrowed or completely blocked that no blood can get to the muscle. Your heart muscle starves and then dies. Lack of blood means your heart cannot pump the blood properly and is very dangerous.
Types of Angina
There are two types of angina. These depend on whether or not you’re physically active when the pain comes on (e.g. walking and climbing stairs)
- Stable – when you get chest pain during moderate physical activity, and they go away with rest or medication
- Unstable – when your chest pain changes or when you get chest pain when you are resting or not doing anything very active. This is an emergency, and you need to be seen by a healthcare professional.