Women, How Well Do You Know Your Hearts?

This year on February 14, that annual day of hearts, do something good for your physical heart. Visit the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women site and have a Go Red Heart Checkup here. It’s a free, easy assessment of your heart health complete with recommendations, if needed, for decreasing your risk of heart disease. I finished mine in under five minutes.

In case you’re under thirty or think heart health is your grandmother’s problem—not yours—think again. The current state of female heart health is truly frightening, but largely preventable and certainly improvable. In one in every 2.6 females in the US the cause of death is heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular disease compared with one in thirty who die of breast cancer. Moreover, 38 percent of women compared with 25 percent of men will die within one year after a heart attack.

Coronary heart disease, which causes heart attack, is the leading cause of death for American women. Many women believe that cancer is more of a threat, but they’re wrong. Nearly twice as many women in the United States die of heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases as from all forms of cancer, including breast cancer.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) heart disease and stroke are the most common cardiovascular diseases. They are the first and third leading causes of death for both men and women in the United States, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all annual deaths. More than 1.4 million Americans die of cardiovascular diseases each year, which is 1 death every 36 seconds. Although these largely preventable conditions are more common among people aged sixty-five or older, the number of sudden deaths from heart disease among people aged 15–34 has increased. Young women, that means you’re at risk too!

In addition, more than 79 million Americans currently live with a cardiovascular disease (isn’t that about a fifth of our current total population?). The economic impact of cardiovascular diseases on our nation’s health care system continues to grow as the population ages. The cost of heart disease and stroke in the United States is projected to be $431.8 billion in 2007, including health care expenditures and lost productivity from death and disability.