HCFI Update:Heart Disease is every woman’s concern

Heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined in women including breast cancer. Normally, women are not supposed to get heart attack before menopause but now a days, ratio is 40:60 indicating a faulty lifestyle amongst women, said Padmashri & Dr. B.C. Roy National Awardee, Dr. KK Aggarwal, President Heart Care Foundation of India and MTNL Perfect Health Mela.

Being an Indian woman, is a risk factor for heart attack. A study from UK had shown that Indian women are 17% more prone to get heart attack than a local UK women. Indian women are more prone to get obesity, fatty liver, diabetes and insulin resistance.

Earlier women used to prevent heart attack by indulging into regular walks, skipping, dancing and games like Kikli at ceremonies but now, most women are living a faulty lifestyle indulging into both active and passive smoking, having late nights with faulty diet heavy in white sugar, white maida and white rice.

It has been observed that heart attack in women is more serious, more fatal and less attended to. Chances of women undergoing angioplasty or bypass surgery are less than that of any man.

With simple changes and a better understanding of the condition, many people live full and active lives. The time to take charge of your health is today.

 Changing lifestyle, stress and a poor metabolic profile are making young and middle-aged women more susceptible to heart diseases.

 Facts about women and heart

Although the traditional risk factors for coronary artery disease such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure and obesity affect women and men, other factors may play a bigger role in the development of heart disease in women. For example:

1.   Metabolic syndrome  a combination of fat around the abdomen, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and high triglycerides  has a greater impact on women than on men.

2.  Mental stress and depression affect women's hearts more than men's.

3.    Smoking is a greater risk factor for heart disease in women than in men.

4.    Low levels of estrogen after menopause pose a significant risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease in the smaller blood vessels (small vessel heart disease).

5.   While heart disease is the leading cause of death for women 65 and older, it's the third-leading cause of death for women 25 to 44 and the second-leading cause of death for women 45 to 64. Women under the age of 65 who have a family history of heart disease should pay particularly close attention to the heart disease risk factors. Still, all women, of all ages, should take heart disease seriously.

6.   The most common symptom of a heart attack in both men and women is some type of pain, pressure or discomfort in the chest. But it's not always severe or even the most prominent symptom, particularly in women. Women are more likely than men to have signs and symptoms unrelated to chest pain, such as:  Neck, shoulder, upper back or abdominal discomfort; Shortness of breath; Nausea or vomiting; Sweating; Light-headedness or dizziness; Unusual fatigue. These signs and symptoms are more subtle than the obvious crushing chest pain often associated with heart attacks. This may be because women tend to have blockages not only in their main arteries, but also in the smaller arteries that supply blood to the heart a condition called small vessel heart disease.

7.   In some women, plaques build up as an evenly spread layer along artery walls, which isn't treatable using procedures such as angioplasty and stenting designed to flatten the bulky, irregular plaques in some men's arteries. For some women, drug treatment rather than angioplasty or stenting may be a better   option.

8. Certain heart medications, such as clot-busting drugs thrombolytics) tend to be more effective in women than in men. Aspirin therapy benefits both men and women, but there's also a difference between men and women in the effects of aspirin therapy. In women, aspirin therapy seems to reduce the risk of stroke more than in men, while in men it reduces the risk of heart attack more than it reduces stroke.

9.    There are several lifestyle changes women can make to reduce your risk of heart disease:  Exercise 30 to 60 minutes a day on most days of the week; Maintain a healthy weight; Quit or don't start smoking and eat a diet that's low in saturated fat, cholesterol and salt.  10. Some women at high risk of heart disease may also benefit from the use of supplements, such as omega-3  fatty acids.

11. Today 1 in 2 women die of heart disease or stroke, compared with 1 in 25 women who die of breast cancer. 42% of women who have heart attacks die within 1 year compared with 24 percent of men.

12. Smoking by women causes almost as many deaths from heart disease as from lung cancer.

13. Women with heart disease are more likely to die (5.6% of the women versus 4.3% of the men).

14. One of every three deaths for women is from heart disease, only one in every thirty death is from breast cancer. Over 60% of women believe their biggest health threat is breast cancer but heart disease kills 6 times as many women as breast cancer. Most women do not
realize heart disease is a health threat.

15. Women who smoke are two to six times more likely to suffer a heart attack than a non smoking woman and the risk increases with the number of cigarettes you smoke each day. Smoking also boosts the risk of stroke. Women who smoke risk having a heart attack 19 years earlier than non smoking women.

16. Women with diabetes are two to three times more likely to have heart attacks.

 The survival rate following a heart attack is lower among women than men. Reasons for high mortality in women include differences in diagnosis, treatment, symptoms, reaction to drugs and age at the onset of the disease.