Best Beauty Tips:Special Health Alert: Women’s Heart Disease
Article Summary:
Article Content:
Friday, February 6th was “National Wear Red Day” in order to support awareness of women’s heart disease. Men and women face very different challenges of heart disease. Men’s heart disease has largely been the focus of cardiovascular research. In fact, until the mid-1990s women were largely left out of heart census taking. Even more frightening, studies reveal women receive less medical treatment despite having more cardiac symptoms.
Heart disease is the leading cause of women’s death in America, accounting for half of all women’s deaths and killing 5 times more often than breast cancer. Heart disease for women, as for men, is linked to obesity, too little exercise and high cholesterol (even though tests show women have 60-70% less artery clogging plaque than men). However, statistics show that a woman is 50% MORE likely to die from a heart attack than a man!
Here’s why the risk is so great:
- Women have heart attacks at older ages (when they are more likely to be in poorer health) than men.
- Female arteries are less able to compensate for the partial death of heart muscle caused by a heart attack, so a second heart attack is even more dangerous for women.
- Heart attack symptoms are different- Women are less likely to have the intense chest pains during a heart attack than men (the reason researchers believe they are more reluctant to seek treatment). Instead, women should watch for shortness of breath, unexplained sudden fatigue or back pain as well as chest pains.
A Woman’s Healthy Heart Program
Women’s heart disease is a problem that–for all too long–has been ’swept under the carpet,’ not only in the media, but in the traditional medical community as well, and even in the alternative health field it has failed to achieve the recognition it deserves as one of the top preventable causes of death among women. All of that is starting to change, but it won’t be easy. Spread the word.