[mikekchar]

I can relate. I had a couple of bouts of chest pain/could be panic attacks/could be anything in the last couple of years. I think it might be connected with my blood pressure medicine, but again the real problem is that it could be anything. Not having had a heart attack before, one doesn't know what it feels like, so you're left wondering, "It that what it feels like?" I've been very healthy all my life and so when something suddenly isn't right, it's so surprising. All the time I'm thinking, "Well, why all of a sudden now?"

The one thing I can say is that the worry itself seems to make things about a million times worse. I've made a big effort to remove stress from my life and it seems to have helped. With my medicine, I had to explain to my doctor that "10% chance of side effect X" doesn't mean that it's very unlikely that the side effect I'm having is from the medicine -- rather that he should expect that 10% of his patients taking the medicine will get that side effect from it. Amazing, but he'd never realised that before. Now he's a lot more cooperative about choosing medicine that doesn't cause serious problems :-).

I think a big part, though, is that having a belief that you are healthy makes a big difference in how you interpret problems with your body. For me, once I got things checked out I reasoned that the chance that they've made a mistake is quite small. So while I may have a symptom it does not necessarily follow that I have a serious problem. Getting it checked out is important, but once you have, then worrying is only likely to make you ill. So far that's worked well for me. YMMV.

(But as you say -- still scary as hell if you think about it too much...)

[cableshaft]

And then you have celebrities like Kevin Smith that tell their having a heart attack story and say 'it just felt like I was a little out of breath, but they said my Widowmaker artery was 80% blocked and if they didn't operate right away I would die.', and I'm like 'I have asthma. I often feel like I'm "a little short of breath". If that's the only symptom I get, I'm screwed!'

I am not eating healthy enough or exercising anywhere near enough still to feel confident enough that I'm healthy. I need to course correct for that. Work really hasn't helped lately. A lot of late nights and stress, and my willpower goes to shit when I'm stressed.