When Nikki was hit by shoulder pain and waves of nausea at just 46, she assumed she was going through the perimenopause.
But they were actually the signs of an incoming attack — a serious medical emergency that is climbing in the under 50s.
Sudden chest pains and and being short of breathe are well-known red flags.
Yet the estate agent, from Houston, Texas, who had no previous health conditions, said the unusual triggers began roughly a week before she suffered the heart attack.
Now, in a TikTok video watched more than 7.5 million times, she has warned of the early warning signs that struck before the deadly event.
‘About a week ago, I started waking up in the morning and my left shoulder was sore,’ she said.
‘It felt like I was sleeping on it wrong. I thought it was possibly a frozen shoulder from perimenopause.
‘Then the day before I had my heart attack, I woke up in the morning and my shoulder was sore again. I felt like I was going to throw up.’
Nikki from Houston, Texas, who had no previous health conditions and has never had a Covid vaccine, said the unusual triggers began roughly a week before she suffered the heart attack
Yet, she went about her day as normal and it only took her roughly 15 minutes to get over the nausea.
On the morning of her medical emergency, despite experiencing the same symptoms, she woke up again as normal and ‘got some coffee’.
It was only after sitting back down, she began to feel her chest tighten ‘like someone was squeezing it’.
She added: ‘Then, the pain from my shoulder started going down my arm a little bit.
‘At that point I held my husband up and told him “don’t go to work yet, I’m really not feeling that well. I’m going to jump in the shower and see if that helps me feel better”.
By the time she got out the shower she ‘felt better’, and went to a doctor’s appointment for an unrelated health issue.
‘I said, “go ahead and go to work because I’m going to be at the doctor’s office later anyway so I’m sure he’s going to look at my heart and I will tell him what happened,’ she told TikTok.
‘At the doctors office I told him what had happened and he said if it happens again I should go straight to the emergency room.
While some warning signs are easy to spot ¿ such as severe chest pain ¿ others are more vague and hard to pinpoint
‘He didn’t feel like I should go right then because I wasn’t experiencing any symptoms and they probably weren’t going to be able to see what was going on.’
Just an hour later, however, she was suddenly hit by common symptoms including sudden pain, heaviness and a tight sensation in the chest.
‘The arm pain was radiating all the way down. My chest felt like it was being squeezed as tight as you could squeeze it.
‘I started to feel sick again, I texted my husband and said the feeling came back and that I was one street away from the emergency room,’ she added.
‘I was inside the hospital probably within two minutes and went straight up to the counter and said “I need someone to look at my heart right this second”.
‘At that point I was shaking. There was a male nurse who then peeked round the corner and saw me and saved my life.
‘He saw me, he waved me back and within seconds that we knew I was having a heart attack.’
In separate TikTok videos posted since the medical emergency, she has told followers she now feels ‘so much better physically and mentally’.
NHS data shows a rise in the number of younger adults suffering from heart attacks over the past decade. The biggest increase (95 per cent) was recorded in the 25-29 year-old demographic, though as numbers of patients are low even small spikes can look dramatic
After doctors were initially mystified by the cause of the heart attack, with no blockages or plaque build up in her arteries, she saw a women’s heart specialist at The Texas Heart Institute.
‘She believes what jumpstarted it was a perfect storm of perimenopause and a recent illness. It was all at once,’ Nikki said.
‘But she does not believe that there is a strong genetic link at this time.’
Scans since her heart attack have also suggested she has lasting damage to her heart which she is undergoing further tests for.
Around 2million people in the UK are diagnosed with some form of heart disease, according to Government figures.
But charities estimate that a further six million have undiagnosed high blood pressure – one of the leading risk factors for stroke and heart attack.
Heart disease describes a range of conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels.
It’s often caused by fatty deposits in the arteries that can make it harder for blood and oxygen to flow properly through the vessels and to and from the heart.
This increases the risk of a blockage, and therefore stroke or heart attack.
MailOnline has previously highlighted how the number of young people in England being treated for heart attacks by the NHS is on the rise.
Last year, alarming data also revealed that premature deaths from cardiovascular problems, such as heart attacks and strokes, had hit their highest level in more than a decade.
Cases of heart attacks, heart failure and strokes among the under-75s had tumbled since the 1960s thanks to plummeting smoking rates, advanced surgical techniques and breakthroughs such as stents and statins.
But now, rising obesity rates, and its catalogue of associated health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes, are thought to be one of the major contributing factors.
Slow ambulance response times for category 2 calls in England — which includes suspected heart attacks and strokes — as well as long waits for tests and treatment have also been blamed.
Despite claims from anti-vaxxers, cardiologists say fears that Covid vaccines might have fuelled an increase in heart problems are way off the mark.
