I am a 56 year old male non-smoker. I have played sports my entire life. For the last 6 years I work out at a gym 3 times a week trying to maintain a lean muscular body, my blood pressure is perfect, my cholesterol is naturally low at 139, there is no history of heart disease in my family and my parents are doing very well at 86 years old. I am 5’8” tall, weight 160lbs, and I would guess my body fat is 12 to 15%. I walk my dog about an hour a day. Approximately 1.5 years ago I started feeling an ache in the center of my chest while walking the dog most times during the first 15 minutes of exercise. After approximately 15 minutes of cardio exercise I’m fine and can hike some very strenuous trails above 10,000 feet altitude for hours with no discomfort. The only problem I have is the first 15 minutes. The ache stops as soon as I stop exercising. This last fact concerned my Doctor very much and he gave me an EKG and lung test where I take a deep breath and blow into a tube to measure lung capacity. The EKG was normal and blow test was 100%. Still concerned my Doctor sent me in for a chest xray and nuclear stress test which was normal. Based on the above my Doctor does NOT believe my symptoms to be a heart problem and encourages me to continue to exercise.
I have two questions for the group; can anyone give me any insight to the cause and cure for this problem? Secondly I wear a gold medal around my neck which drops down to the ache area. After my stress test I realized that I was wearing the metal during the entire test and x-rays. Would my medal compromise the test results?
Thank you.