A leading cardiologist has listed the top 10 heart symptoms you should never ignore - including sweating with light exercise, nausea with chest ache, and being tired on waking. Dr Ameet Bakhai, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation, revealed other signs that could indicate your heart is in less than tip-top condition, including heaviness in the arm on exertion, shortness of breath walking up stairs, and frequent extra or missed heartbeats.

Difficulty bending down and standing up, feeling dizzy when standing up quickly, and swollen legs are also indicators that your heart is not adapting to your positions or is holding spare fluid in the body and needs attention. But research of 2,000 adults found 54 per cent wouldn’t associate most of these symptoms with poor heart health.

And half have suffered at least one of these symptoms before. Dr Ameet Bakhai, who has a special interest in research into how lifestyle factors can impact cardiac health and how we can prevent this, also revealed an adult with a healthy heart should be able to run up two flights of stairs without getting out of breath and squat on a toilet, providing they have no other health conditions.

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Similarly, a healthy adult should be able to hold their breath comfortably for 20 seconds. Dr Ameet, who has been advising Healthspan's Love Your Heart supplement range, which commissioned the research, said: “We often ignore our heart health and it’s signals until it’s too late.

"There’s no annual MOT to be passed for most of us, so we ignore the small signals that our own engine is not performing ideally. Heart issues can often get progressively worse, until one day you have a more complicated issue - that could have been avoided if you'd heeded the warning signs.

“Heart issues can be connected to other things - you might consider not being able to run up two flights of stairs more of a lung condition or a lack of fitness or of weight gain, but there is a lot of overlap with coronary artery disease or heart valve problems or irregular heart rhythms.

“So, looking after your heart health is essential and should be planned as a new year resolution every year.”

But Dr Bakhai added: “Heart disease can affect people of all ages, particularly in the era of Covid and beyond, as the virus can attack the heart and the heart lining quite commonly as a condition called myopericarditis (inflamed heart and heart covering - the pericardium).

"Warning signs like chest tightness, aches in your arms or jaw, dizziness on standing, breathlessness with bending down should act like a wake-up call that your heart is calling out for help. Becoming heart aware is vital and more than half of those in the survey were not aware that if they partner had suffered a cardiac episode in the last five years it was highly likely that their risk factors are also increased due to parallel lifestyles.”

1. Dizziness on standing up quickly
2. Shortness of breath
3. Difficulty bending down
4. Palpitations
5. Tightness of the chest
6. Arm pain - neck or upper arms, often the left
7. Difficulty standing up
8. Chest discomfort (excluding tightness)
9. Swollen legs
10. Frequent extra or skipped heartbeats