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Women At Risk
The Importance of Heart Health
By Teri Brown
The first time Carol Foreman suffered a heart attack, she didn't even know it.
Tachycardia, which Foreman experienced, is an abnormally accelerated heart rate, usually caused by a cardiac arrhythmia and generally seen in patients with underlying heart disease. Symptoms include a rapid heart beat, dizziness and heavy breathing.
"I felt like I had run a marathon," says Foremen, a 68-year-old grandmother from Edgewood, Wash., who took the incident as a warning sign and visited her physician. "It's terrifying to have the doctor tell you that something is wrong with your heart."
More women than ever before, however, are hearing the same news. The statistics are alarming:
- Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of American women.
- One in every three American women dies of heart disease.
- Women's heart disease risk starts to rise in middle age.
- Nearly two-thirds of American women who die suddenly of a heart attack had no prior symptoms.
- Fewer than a third of women in a national survey recognized heart disease as the leading cause of death for American women.
- Only 9 percent of women in a national survey named heart disease as the condition they most fear – 61 percent named breast cancer.
Information like this only makes one want to know more about the problem. It raises such questions as, "Am I at risk?" "What are the symptoms?" and "How can I keep my heart healthy?"
Dr. Ileana Piña is a cardiologist at Case Western University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, and a member of the Heart Failure Society of America's Executive Council. One of the greatest concerns she faces in her work is how many women overlook the most common signs of heart failure.
