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Marianne J. Legato
Wednesday, 19 February 2020 / Published in Dr. Legato's Blog

Chest Pain at Night

Q. I frequently wake up with pain in my chest. It goes away in a few minutes and it’s not very painful. I think it’s only indigestion, but could it be my heart? Should I call my doctor?

A. Chest pain at night could be caused by any of several problems, and although it is usually not serious and is just indigestion, it could also be life-threatening. Here are some of the possible causes of chest pain and advice on how to deal with them.
Heart If you wake up with severe chest pain call your doctor for advice, particularly if this is the first time this has happened to you. You could be having a heart attack or be suffering from angina pectoris, a condition caused by not enough blood flowing to the heart muscle, which could eventually lead to a heart attack. Other symptoms that often accompany angina or a heart attack are feeling breathless, heart palpitations, or profuse sweating. In many cases, your doctor will be able to sort out over the telephone, what is causing your pain by listening to the description of your symptoms. If she suspects a heart problem, she may want to meet you at her office or the nearest emergency room. If your doctor is not available, go to the nearest emergency room yourself. Even if it turns out to be a false alarm, and you’re only suffering from indigestion, it is better to err on the side of caution than to miss the first signs of a heart attack. The earlier you have treatment for a heart attack, the better your chances of survival and complete recovery.
Exertion If you are awakened by mild pain that disappears quickly, it may very well be due to overexertion of your chest muscles. Try to remember any new or different activity that may have triggered the pain. Carrying unusually heavy bundles, playing tennis after a long period of inactivity, even vigorous sex can all cause muscle soreness after a few hours or even a day after exertion. Aspirin or ibuprofen should relieve muscle soreness.
Stomach An inflamed stomach lining, too much acid in the stomach, or even irritation of the tube that leads from the mouth to the stomach can all cause chest pain. If you wake up in pain and suspect that it is due to an angry stomach, try getting up out of bed and standing upright for a while. An antacid like Tums or Mylanta may also help.


Marianne J. Legato
Marianne J. Legato

Marianne J. Legato, MD, Ph. D. (hon. c.), FACP is an internationally renowned academic, physician, author, lecturer, and pioneer in the field of gender-specific medicine. She is a Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Legato is also the Director of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine, which she founded in 2006 as a continuation of her work with The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University. She received an honorary PhD from the University of Panama in 2015 for her work on the differences between men and women.

At its core, gender-specific medicine is the science of how normal human biology differs between men and women and how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender. Dr. Legato’s discoveries and those of her colleagues have led to a personalization of medicine that assists doctors worldwide in understanding the difference in normal function of men and women and in their sex-specific experiences of the same diseases.

She began her work in gender-specific medicine by authoring the first book on women and heart disease, The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Coronary Artery Disease, which won the Blakeslee Award of the American Heart Association in 1992. Because of this research, the cardiovascular community began to include women in clinical trials affirming the fact that the risk factors, symptoms, and treatment of the same disease can be significantly different between the sexes. Convinced that the sex-specific differences in coronary artery disease were not unique, Dr. Legato began a wide-ranging survey of all medical specialties and in 2004, published the first textbook on gender-specific medicine, The Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine. The second edition appeared in 2010 and the third edition, dedicated to explaining how gender impacts biomedical investigation in the genomic era, won the PROSE Award in Clinical Medicine from the Association of American Publishers in 2018. A fourth edition is forthcoming.

She also founded the first scientific journals publishing new studies in the field, The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine, and a newer version, Gender Medicine, both listed in the Index Medicus of the National Library of Medicine. She has founded a third peer-reviewed, open access journal, Gender and the Genome, which focuses on the impact of biological sex on technology and its effects on human life.

Dr. Legato is the author of multiple works, including: What Women Need to Know (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Eve’s Rib (Harmony Books, 2002), Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget (Rodale, 2005), Why Men Die First (Palgrave, 2008), The International Society for Gender Medicine: History and Highlights (Academic Press, 2017), and most recently, The Plasticity of Sex (Academic Press, 2020). Her books have been translated into 28 languages to date.

As an internationally respected authority on gender medicine, Dr. Legato has chaired symposia and made keynote addresses to world congresses in gender-specific medicine in Berlin, Israel, Italy, Japan, Panama, South Korea, Stockholm, and Vienna. In collaboration with the Menarini Foundation, she is co-chairing a symposium on epigenetics, Sex, Gender and Epigenetics: From Molecule to Bedside, to be held in Spring 2021 in Italy. She maintains one of the only gender-specific private practice in New York City, and she has earned recognition as one of the “Top Doctors in New York.”

Tagged under: What Women Need to Know

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