Chest pain that feels like acute muscle spasm

It comes on incredibly strongly all of a sudden, always between 2 and 3 in the morning. If I'm awake I know within a minute or so that it's appearing, if I'm asleep the pain is sudden and acute enough to wake me up.

I'm used to muscle spasm pain because of years-long back problems that are treated by a chiropractor and stretching exercises, and that's what it feels like.

The pain begins very localised across the bottom of my ribcage/diaphragm, very close to the surface, almost like the muscle is being violently twisted or wrung out (characteristic of muscle spasm pain).

It's usually pretty crippling for the first hour, and bad enough to keep me up for at least 4-5 hours, at which time it starts to level off a bit. The pain gradually becomes more diffuse throughout my trunk and down into my stomach area, duller and not so sharp.

I'm usually out of action for the rest of the day, very sore and exhausted (though that might be missing a night's sleep) unable to lay on my side of front and feeling like I've been kicked by a horse and my whole torso is badly bruised. By the day after the pain is usually gone.

It's been happening for about three years, coming on every 4-6 months.

There have occasionally been variations. Usually I experience another bout of it with 1-3 weeks after the first attack. Sometimes it's not nearly as bad, coming on merely as strong diffuse pain overnight, and doing so much more slowly.

Recently the second bout of it came on as the duller pain in the midafternoon and I was mostly functional for the rest of the day and finally able to go to sleep at about midnight. The most recent bout has also seen a third attack (again, of the duller, more diffuse pain).

The first informal diagnosis that came from friends and family with experience of it is anxiety attacks, particularly as when it happened the first few times I was able to watch TV on an iPad and distract myself from it somewhat. But it doesn't happen when I'm stressed or anxious about anything, indeed often appearing when I'm in a deep sleep.

When I mentioned it to my chiropractor he suggested taking anti-inflammatory (ibuprofen) and attaching a TENS machine to my back and chest and that seems to take the worst of it away after 1/2 - 1 hour, which makes me further suspect muscle pain.

I'm going to get a basic heart check to be sure but as my GP has said, I'd more likely experience chest pain when exercising or doing something strenuous too if it was my heart.

I'm very fit otherwise, eat well and get enough exercise. I'm within the healthy BMI range, 49 years old and male, with no particular family history of hereditary heart disease.

Any ideas or advice welcome. Every time I go through it I tell myself I can't do it again!

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