My father had a heart attack two years ago. I live quite far away from my parents and when my mother called to tell me he was in the hospital, I felt trapped, panicked, and completely powerless. I couldn’t get there to help him and even if I could get there, what would I do? My father panicked, too. The chest pains and imagery of his heart struggling to beat so scared him, that he hasn’t taken so much as a bite of barbeque or a sip of Jack Daniels since the incident. This—from a born and bred cotton farming Tennessean—is a colossal transformation.
After two years of regimented exercise, diet, and medication, my father is now less likely to have a heart attack than most men in his condition. But the episode got me thinking about my heart and I wondered what my chances were of having a “heart-stopping” experience. I’d always assumed heart attacks happened to men and breast cancer happened to women. I was shocked to learn that coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, significantly outnumbering deaths from all cancers combined. Even more frightening, one in three women in the United States have heart disease.
In examining the risk factors, family history jumped out at me, but the list also included smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure. One of the principal concerns for women with coronary heart disease is their hesitation to seek medical help. Women are less likely than men to go to a doctor when they experience the symptoms of chest pain and they are diagnosed later in the disease process. This may mean the heart has already sustained a great deal of damage. Diagnosing women with coronary heart disease can be difficult because they may experience no symptoms or atypical symptoms such as back and neck pain, abdominal discomfort, fatigue, or a burning in the chest. This is disturbing news for women—and it gets worse.
Women are less likely than men to receive effective treatment and, once the diagnosis is made, the overall prognosis is often significantly worse. They spend twice as much time in the hospital after a heart attack and they tend to have greater complications after angioplasty or bypass surgery. I was only slightly comforted to learn that women are often ten to twenty years older than men when they contract heart disease, but there is no doubt that we women need to be better informed and educated about this potentially fatal disease now.
The American Heart Association (AHA) estimates that nearly 500,000 women will have a heart attack in the next year and they are trying to raise awareness among the “deadlier” gender through sexy campaigns like Red Dress Day and Go Red For Women. The AHA has an excellent Web site (www.americanheart.org), heaving with tips on diet, exercise, and heart health. The site also features a risk assessment test that women can take to determine their risk level. I have a pretty low risk level at the moment, but I will check myself regularly in the future.
Now that I know how much more likely I am to develop heart disease than breast cancer, I check my heart as often as I check my breasts. A healthy lifestyle is the best preventative measure to fight heart disease. That means no smoking, a balanced diet with limited salt and alcohol, and thirty minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every day.
The AHA recommends that everyone start monitoring his or her risk level at twenty years of age, including cholesterol and blood pressure numbers. I’m a little late, but luckily not too late. Informing myself about heart disease has made me feel much less panicked about my father’s health. Being aware of my own risk level and the symptoms of heart disease have given me an unexpected sense of empowerment and well-being.
