Faye Lee: You know, for actually generations now there has been an enormous difference between the way women, have been perceived and treated in the cardiovascular arena. The emphasis in last five to ten years has been to make women aware of a fact, that cardiovascular disease is important in their lives and is probably one of the more treatable causes of death for women and early on.
Women and men are absolutely different. One out of every three die of heart disease, and is the number one killer of women. Much more so than breast cancer, urine cancer and other diseases combine.
I think that women should realize that -- and this has been always in the past that they can present very differently, with heart disease than men. For instance when you have a heart attack, the traditional presentation for men would be the Substernal chest discomfort, that radiates down their arm, after having eaten a large meal and going out in cold.
This is the traditional presentation for men for heart attack. For women it could be much more subtle. Women have more a typically chest pain, like jaw pain, toothache and elbow pain. Women can present with fatigue and sort of these non-specific flu like symptoms of course, shortness of breath, chest pain, the palpitations, these are all could be sign of a heart attack.
Women have developed heart disease about 10 years later, than men. But very quickly after menopause, women and men start in turns of heart disease start to - women starts to catch up with men. So that 10 years later, women actually, have the same instance as men of coronary disease. So women should start having the cholesterols checked and start having their blood pressure check at an earlier age than we though in the past.
Especially, if you have any risk factors for cardiac disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, you smoke, even second hand smoke is a risk factor, also family history of any coronary disease or death in close relative and early age. These are all, if you know, that you have any of these risk factors you should definitely, pay attention to any kind of chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, dizziness and especially if you have chest discomfort that last greater than 15-20 minutes, you should 911.
In terms, of preventive modification there are something that you cant modify. But there are many modifiable risk factors and they include -- the primary once are hypertension to get your blood pressure at any age and within a normal range to get your diabetes very-very closely controlled, get your blood sugars within normal range if you can, there is a treatment for your cholesterol. We want the cholesterols in perfect range as well, and smoking. Obviously if you smoke, your factors for developing coronary disease, stroke are two, three, four times besides the risk of lung cancer.
Exercise if you can exercise more you'll definitely, raise your good cholesterol and if you can try to get ideal body weight also, you'll feel better you'll help prevent any diabetes. There's so many things with exercise, it's so important.
For more information call 1-800-GS CARES. Good health to you.
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