How Chest Pain Works

There are more and more numerous and sometimes irreconcilable theories about why chest pain occurs as a symptom of a heart attack. The funniest i heard of so far (actually i heard it in a radio show) is the one that says that they are due to a genetic anomaly. That is some people have some sort of shortcuts in the nervous system, presumbably at the spine level that transmit signals of a heart attack perceived by the brain as chest pain.

That's when i knew that there is yet another crisis in the theory of medicine. 

None of these theories, besides this last fantastic one can explain the variations and the asymmetry. Cause some people have silent heart attacks, with no pain. There should be major genetic differences between people to explain it and that's not the case. Then the asymmetry. It's always the left area of the chest or left hand. So that's when i started thinking, since i'm no stranger to temporary chest discomfort and even pain and had an episode of atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response (when i drove myself on the middle of the night (ambulance showed after i left) on black ice and a quarter inch of frost on the windshield to the hospital, with the pulse oximeter on the finger showing 200+ then on the freeway when there was no ice i went all the way to 90 mph because my truck has a speed limit sensor, for about 2 minutes that seemed an eternity 'till i reached the hospital.)

I believe it's the posture that triggers it. Your body through numerous chemical and hormonal changes during a heart attack, and i believe some of them are just trying to compensate the acute heart failure; through your brain or through some reflex mechanism, contracting certain muscles in the spine and creating a spine curvature, usually asymmetric (due to asymmetry of the position of the heart in the chest, there's more discussion in the paragraph below about this) that can put pressure on the nerves directly or through the extension of the asymmetrically pressured disks, creating the pain sensation.

(I read a few days ago about the importance of the position during sleeping. On the right side, it's better for the heart because there's less pressure and "more room" for the heart due to the position relative to other organs. Why heart needs more room to work? Because heart, like any muscle, can only contract but not expand. It expands only through relaxation when it regains its shape and only if there's no pressure on it allowing the blood to flow inside due to venous pressure. If you put pressure or lay other organs on it, it's not going to have room to expand. Things are aggravated by obesity, cause the intra and extra abdominal fat adds pressure to the abdominal cavity and inside the chest through diaphragm and hiatal hernias to the point that is making your stomach touch the bottom of your heart. Gas and abdominal bloating is another factor. One good sign that your heart does not have enough room to expand are palpitations triggered by your stomach touching the heart through hiatal hernias.)