anxiety vs heart attack

I have another question to anyone out there.  I am still preparing for my EP visit on Thurs...  I have waited almost one year for this.  I want to be a cardiac knowledge GI Jane.  

In all that I read, many symptoms of anxiety/panic are the same as heart disease/attack.  I know many of the posts I read mention anxiety as the diagnosis of the cardiac symptoms.  I had the SAME symptoms 9 years ago and was treated for anxiety for 2 years.  Now, they say I have paroxysmal a-fib and have probably had it all along.  

So my concern is, have any of you ever been told of a way to tell the two (anxiety vs. a true heart problem) apart... while you are at home... without running to an ER?  

Thanks again to all of you.  You are in my prayers daily!

[va_tony]

Heart rate as a result of anxiety usually slowly builds up in time (say over 10 minutes).  Same also afterwards.

With SVT, one moment your heartbeat is normal and a heartbeat later it's racing like crazy.  Likewise, it ends on a heart beat also.

Finally, I would think it's hard to mistake the pulse rate ypical of afib with anxiety racing heart.  With anxiety, the rate is fast but even.  With afib, the rate is irregular.

[abl]

Hi!

No one ever told me the difference, but they feel entirely different.  With anxiety attack the heart beat starts, but then so does everything else.  feeling flush, you can't calm yourself, I would sometimes feel nausea, or I'd wheeze when I took a breath, it's as though everything you are feeling points too...HEART ATTACK, and you feel like you can't stop it....and after a while it just goes away.

When it is not a panic attack, you just think oh, my heart just palpitated, oh huh, it did it again, you  check your pulse, and that is about teh extent of it.  When it is just your heart, it doesn't effect any kind of emotional side, it is just purely physical.

abl