When she hurried through Gatwick airport in June 2017, Esther Stanhope felt clammy and breathless. "I was about to catch a flight to Amsterdam where I was speaking at a conference. It was a warm day and I was pulling my suitcase along, when momentarily I couldn't quite catch my breath. But I was rushing and stressed and put it down to that," she remembers.

The 47-year-old mother of two from London, who runs her own business creating leadership programs for large companies, barely gave it a second thought and when she mentioned it to a friend, they said it was probably a minor panic attack. A few weeks later Stanhope flew to New York to speak at a conference, and also to meet up with one of her brothers and sister-in-law.

The Telegraph London