But if your heart seems to flutter uncontrollably at rest, or it’s not beating as steadily as it once did, an underlying heart issue might be at play. “Palpitations can feel like this thumping in your chest, and you can sense that your heart is beating irregularly,” Dr. Bart explains. “You might suddenly get dizzy and feel like you need to sit down.”
Granted, not all funky beating patterns are problematic, acccording to Dr. Ruberg: “It’s not unusual for the heart to skip a beat every once in a while, though it can be disconcerting when it happens. However, a doctor would be trained to recognise the features of something more serious.”
(Bottom line: If your heartbeat feels different than normal, it won’t hurt to book an appointment with a doc.)
Importantly, if you’re finding yourself experiencing a lot of frantic, anxiety-filled episodes as of late, that’s a biggie, Dr. Bart points out.
“A lot of people I treat with heart issues will describe their symptoms almost like a panic attack,” she says. “Or like something is happening in their body that they can’t explain.”
5. You’re having some issues with the lower half of your body.
Heart trouble can manifest in more surprising parts of your body, too. For example, you can have peripheral artery disease—which is when the arteries that carry blood from your heart to the rest of your body narrow—that sometimes causes pain, numbness, and cramping in your butt, hips, thighs, or calf muscles.
Things typically feel worse when you’re moving. When you have a condition like heart failure, your body also has a harder time pumping blood to other parts of the body. This can cause a buildup of fluid and swelling in the legs, ankles, and feet (called edema).
Your sex life might take a hit too. Erectile dysfunction is one common warning sign of heart disease, and people with vaginas aren’t spared either: Research suggests that heart issues can impact your libido and ability to have an orgasm, or result in problems with lubrication and painful sex.
6. You have a hard time falling and staying asleep.
If you’re dealing with any of the above issues and your sleep sucks, you could be facing some type of cardiovascular problem—for example, heart failure. That’s because, when you lie flat, blood from your legs moves back to your heart, which can overwhelm its pumping capacity.
Alternatively, you might wake up mid-sleep gasping for air due to shortness of breath from the fluid that can back up into the lungs when your heart isn’t taking care of business.
Some studies suggest that people assigned female at birth, more so than folks assigned male at birth, can have issues with their sleep (say, they wake up frequently throughout the night) in the weeks leading up to a heart attack.
In fact, a lot of people with heart problems also have sleep apnea, a condition that causes you to stop and start breathing throughout the night.
The sleep disorder can raise your blood pressure and put a tremendous strain on the heart and body. Sleep apnea symptoms might include loud snoring (ask your partner, if you have one, to let you know), and waking up parched, exhausted, and dealing with massive headaches. So if you’re feeling any of these things, you should bring it to a doctor.
Again, it’s possible to have any symptom on this list and not have heart disease—cardiovascular issues affect everybody differently.
Whether it’s harmless or not, it’s important to flag anything that feels new or different to a doctor.
If something is going on, your health care provider will be able to (a) give you a proper diagnosis, and (b) get you the proper treatment. And because a lot of heart issues develop slowly over time, addressing problems—especially as a young person—can help ensure the best possible outcome.
A version of this article originally appeared on SELF.