PROSPER, Texas — Some believe heart attacks and heart problems affect older people, but research shows that’s not always the case, and Sean Astolfo can vouch for that.

Just a few months ago, the 48-year-old Prosper dad was having a normal a day when his life changed.

Astolfo says the details of that day are very fuzzy for him, but friends and co-workers tell him he’d just wrapped a Zoom meeting at his job. As he finished the meeting, his wife tells him he called her complaining of chest pains.

Astolfo works in the medical field and, saw his father go through a heart attack years ago. He said he didn’t want to take any chances and drove to a nearby ER to get checked out. There, one nurse told him things went rapidly downhill.

“She said four or five minutes later she looked back and I was laying on the stretcher and I was in cardiac arrest,” said Astolfo.

Astolfo said he only remembers opening his eyes days later in a hospital bed.

“Day six or so, I woke up and saw my oldest daughter and my wife,” he said.

That’s when doctors shocked him with the news that he had a heart attack, and a pretty nasty one at that.

“I had to talk to the family, and really try and paint a picture that his prognosis was poor,” Dr. James Park, Astolfo’s cardiologist at Texas Health Dallas, said.

Dr. Park said it’s lucky that Astolfo was already at the hospital when he went into cardiac arrest. Doctors had to monitor Astolfo around the clock for days and use a specialized machine to get him on the mend, but luckily he pulled through.

Astolfo said he’s still shocked that at his age, and in relatively good health, that he nearly died of a heart attack, but it isn’t uncommon.

Several studies over recent years reported an uptick in younger heart attacks. According to a Harvard Medical study, as many as 1 in 5 heart attacks happen to patients under 40. A quick search of “younger heart attacks” on the American Heart Association’s website yields dozens of articles on the subject linking the situation to things like obesity rates, stress, the opioid crisis, side-effects of the pandemic, and even poor mental health.

Dr. Park said he’s seen plenty of patients in that same boat.

“It does happen to people like you and me. We’re fine one day and the next moment we’re clutching our chests and we’re having a heart attack,” said Dr. Park.

Dr. Park said he believes the best approach is for people to get more proactive about their heart health, especially if they have a family history of heart problems.

“We do need to all take good care of ourselves: make sure we’re getting check-ups, make sure we’re seeing a primary care physician, know about our risk,” said Dr. Park.

Astolfo said he certainly is doing just that, as well as eating better and exercising more.

“It can be the blink of an eye,” said Astolfo. “Leaving a meeting and then I wake up six days later after a massive heart attack.”