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Exercise induced chest ache

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.

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Avatar universal
YES my pain does occur several minutes after I start walking fast and will last for approximately 15 minutes unless I stop walking.  Sometimes the discomfort is so bad that I must stop and rest for a minute or so and then continue again, then stop and rest again.

This chest ache also occurs at airports when I start walking quickly to catch a plane.  During my vacation several months ago, a friend was struggling with equipment in deep water.  I dove into the water and swam hard to assist him and started to feel very uncomfortable in deep water which is one of several reasons why I would love to fix this problem.  

Helpful - 0
367994 tn?1304953593
If I understand your symptoms, chest pain does not occur with exertion or at least not exertion related.  There is a condition related to a vascular disorder that effects vascular constriction and/or dilation with neuropathology implication.  

A coronary artery spasm is a brief, temporary tightening (contraction) of the muscles in the artery wall. This can narrow and briefly decrease or even prevent blood flow to part of the heart muscle (myocardium). If the spasm lasts long enough, it can lead to chest pain (angina) and possibly a heart attack (myocardial infarction). These spasms may also be referred to as Prinzmetal angina or variant angina. Unlike typical angina, which usually occurs with exertion, coronary artery spasms often occur at rest
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