Do you know a woman who is one in eight million?
According to the Women’s Heart Foundation, eight million women in the U.S. are living with heart disease. And while their ages at the time of a heart attack average 70.4, younger women are not immune: 83,000 are 65 or younger, and 35,000 are 55 or younger.
“Heart disease is the number one killer,” says Jennifer Mieres, MD, co-author, with Terri Ann Parnell, of Heart Smart for Black Women and Latinas. “Women and men are vulnerable—it’s an equal opportunity killer.”
But neither women nor medical professionals are as quick to recognize the symptoms in a woman. Too often, that’s a fatal mistake. Women’s Heart Foundation statistics show that 42% of women die within a year of having a heart attack; the figure for men is just 24%. And the disparity grows for women younger than 50, who are twice as likely as men to suffer a fatal heart attack.
“Most women will have classic symptoms—the same symptoms described by men,” Mieres says. The risk factors are also the same: being overweight and/or sedentary, smoking, having a family history of heart disease, or having high blood pressure, diabetes, or elevated cholesterol.
However, recent studies have revealed that women can have less classic symptoms, particularly while they are in perimenopause. Those symptoms can include back pain or indigestion combined with nausea and sweating. “One warning symptom that women are not in tune with is reduction in your exercise capacity when you’re accustomed to being active,” Mieres says. That can be a “marker” for an impending heart attack.
That’s why she advises women to be aggressive in seeking treatment. “Women need to be a little more proactive when they go to the emergency room,” she says. “Instead of saying, ‘I’m not feeling well,’ say, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.’ “And let them prove you wrong.”
CONNECT THE DOTS
For more information about heart health, visit the Heart and Vascular Disease page of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The American Heart Association’s Getting Healthy page offers tips on nutrition, physical activity, weight and stress management, quitting smoking, and raising healthier kids, and its Go Red for Women resources are available in English and Spanish. For more news on heart health, also check out our blog posts, “New Formula for Women’s Peak Heart Rates,”“Healthy Gums Could Prevent a Heart Attack,” “How the Mediterranean Diet Helps the Heart.”
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