I’m level 1 autistic and I had a heart attack when I was 34 years old.

Well, technically it was a stress-induced cardiomyopathy event, but it looked and felt exactly like a heart attack and is considered very similar to one and can be as devastating as one if it’s not addressed properly.

And I want to talk about why I think it was my autism that led to that heart attack.

Now I want to be very clear. I’m not suggesting that everyone who is autistic is going to have this experience.

However, I do believe that everyone who is autistic who does not get their needs met is potentially at risk for experiencing something like this, and I’m going to explain why.

So first of all, recently I talked about something called distinct anxiety.

Which is a type of anxiety that researchers are now looking into and are saying is very specific to autism or autistic brain wiring.

And the reason they’re saying this is that there are anxiety reactions and responses that autistic people experience that can’t be explained by any other existing anxiety disorder or condition.

So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with anxiety tied to our autistic brain wiring.

So if I think back to when I had my heart event and I think about all the things that led up to it, one of the main things that contributed, in my opinion, was actually related to sensory overload.

But it wasn’t a specific instance of sensory overload.

It was sensory overload that continued for a prolonged period of time.

So let me explain.

At that point in time, I was living in a house that was a multifamily house that was split down the middle.

I lived on one side of the house and there were people living on the other side of the house, and my office shared a wall with them.

Now I worked from home full-time back then. So during working hours I was at my desk trying to do my job.

And the person who lived on the other side of the house was a musician.

Now to be clear, I don’t think that this person did anything wrong.

However, she did play her musical instrument at all times during the day, and this coincided a lot of the time with my working hours.

Now what ended up happening was she would play this instrument, it was a very high-pitched musical instrument, while I was working, and my anxiety would spike.

And so I started to take breaks from my job, from my work when that would happen, but it wasn’t quite enough.

And so over the course of this period of time, which was at least several months, I would experience spikes in my anxiety on a regular basis.

And then there was this one day where my anxiety was just absolutely bonkers through the roof.

And I remember actually experiencing pain in my left arm. It was very odd, because at that time, when I was 34, I had never experienced pain like that.

And I remember kind of going through my day as normal but feeling a little short of breath, tightness in my chest, and then that left arm pain showed up toward the end of the day.

My kids were quite small back then, they were toddlers. So I had put them to bed and I did my normal duties as a parent.

My husband actually wasn’t home yet at that point. He got home later in the day.

And I remember lying in bed, short of breath, pain down my left arm, thinking to myself… something is not right.

And so, I ended up going to the ER. They did some testing and checked my heart…

And ultimately they told me that there were irregularities in whatever the testing they did was. I don’t remember now anymore. And they determined that there was an issue with my heart.

And at that point they weren’t sure if there was a blockage or not.

So they ended up doing an invasive procedure, I don’t remember what it was called, where they put something inside my veins to check to see if there was a blockage.

And ultimately discovered that there wasn’t one, which is how they ultimately diagnosed me with stress-induced cardiomyopathy. Because they said that the heart event I had was stress-induced.

So if you think back to the distinct anxiety description, which is anxiety tied to autistic brain wiring…

And then you think about how sensory is a significant element of autism, it’s one of the criteria in the DSM…

And then you think about how my needs weren’t met as an autistic person with sensory sensitivities over the course of a significant period of time…

That ultimately led to a stress-induced heart event.

It makes perfect sense that it was my autism.

That it was because of distinct anxiety related to my autistic brain wiring.

Now I’m not going to lie… there were a lot of other things happening back then. And I had a lot of other things related to my autistic brain wiring that also triggered my distinct anxiety. So that wasn’t the only thing.

But I do firmly believe that it was a significant factor in why I had that stress-induced heart event.

So all is to say that distinct anxiety is real. 

The research is still ongoing. They’ve only done it on a relatively small number of people. The gender distribution was not very good. I don’t believe the race distribution was very good either. So there’s a lot more work to do there…

But my personal experience does align with what the researchers are now looking into and defining as what they’re calling autism-distinct anxiety or distinct anxiety.

So that’s my story.

I hope some of you found this interesting, helpful, somewhat informative.

I’m not claiming to be an expert in this. I am just autistic. So take it for what it is worth. I am not an expert. 

But anyway, thanks for watching. And if you have any questions, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.