February is heart health month, a good reason to stop and take notice of the fact that heart disease is striking young and younger women these days, and a large percentage of those who show up in emergency rooms have no idea  they just had a heart attack.

The American Heart Association reports that 40,000 women aged 55 or younger are hospitalized every year in the U.S. because of heart attacks.  Almost half of them – 42 percent – had no idea they had heart problems before they ended up on a hospital gurney.

How could this be? Judith Lichtman and colleagues at Yale’s School of Public Health studied the phenomenon and say it’s because most women don’t have classic attack symptoms.

Take chest discomfort, for instance. Although 90 percent of the young women they studied who had heart attacks experienced the most well-known symptom – Chest Discomfort – because it wasn’t as bad as is often shown in the movies, they didn’t think it was heart related. They also didn’t realize that the chest pain associated with the heart is not necessarily constant and can be sporadic in nature. It can also come in the form of pressure felt in the back between the shoulder blades, in the jaw or the shoulders.

Sweating, weakness and fatigue are other symptoms that are easily passed off as being caused by something else. In the Yale study, 38 percent of the women experienced one of these symptoms with some saying it was more like a panic attack accompanied by a sense of impending doom. The kind of sweating associated with a heart attack is more profuse and clammy than what might be associated with some kind of exertion.

Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting, are also typical of heart attacks and were experienced by 29 percent of the participants in the Yale study.

While some Americans still think of heart disease as a “man’s disease,” it’s actually the leading cause of death among women in the United States. Women account for approximately 52 percent of the total cardiovascular disease deaths annually, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available, cardiovascular disease was the cause of death for nearly 422,000 women in the United States.

Even more alarming are recent statistics that show significant differences between men and women in survival rates following a heart attack. For example, 42 percent of women who have heart attacks die within one year compared with 24 percent of men. The reasons for these differences are not well understood; however, doctors know that women tend to get heart disease about 10 years later in life than men, and they are more likely to have coexisting chronic conditions. Research also has shown that women may not be diagnosed or treated as aggressively as men, and their symptoms may be very different from those of men who are having a heart attack.

Another myth that may lull vulnerable women into complacency about their heart health is the idea that cardiovascular disease is an “older women’s disease.” Even though it is the leading cause of death among women aged 65 and older, it’s also the third leading cause of death among women aged 25 to 44 and the second leading cause of death among women aged 45 to 64, according to the CDC.

In addition to being aware of the symptoms, women also need to understand the risk factors for heart disease.  These include high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and smoking.

Stress is another factor for heart attacks that was once only associated with men, but the advent of women in the work force has brought this bane upon the female working population as well. A large study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine involving 12,116 nurses ages 45 to 64 were tracked for 15 years to determine the effect their jobs and other factors had upon their heart health.

The study began in 1993, and by 2008, 580 of the nurses had been admitted to the hospital with ischemic heart disease which included 369 cases of angina and 138 heart attacks.

Nurses who felt work pressures were much too high were almost 50 percent more likely to have heart disease. After taking account of risk factors for heart disease, such as smoking and lifestyle, the risk fell to 35 percent, but still remained significant. When all of the findings were analyzed by age, only the nurses under the age of 51 were at significant risk of heart disease.

In addition to work related stress, the Rev. Dr. Michael Barry,  Director of Pastoral Care at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Philadelphia, the physical toll of unforgiveness is also hurting our heart health.
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“It’s proven fact that we literally stress ourselves to the max by holding onto anger, bitterness and unforgiveness, all which ultimately put added stress on our hearts and may contribute to other physical illnesses, even cancer,” said Barry, who has spent years conducting clinical research on the link between cancer and the stress of negative emotions.
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“The constant stress of holding onto the negative emotions of unforgiveness wreaks havoc on our bodies, affecting our blood pressure and even making us more susceptible to disease. The constant stress of emotional turmoil that comes when we are unwilling or unable to let go of the negative emotions associated with unforgiveness causes our bodies to produce stress hormones. These hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, actually reduce the production of natural killer cells, or the ‘foot soldiers’ in the fight against disease.
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“Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline also put our bodies in a constant ‘fight-or-flight’ mode,” Barry continued, “like an alarm system that never shuts off. Adrenaline increases our heart rate, elevates blood pressure and boosts energy supplies, while cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars in the bloodstream. None of this is healthy for our hearts.”
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In addition to including a change of heart, changes in lifestyle for women of all ages can make a big difference in whether or not they develop heart disease. The most commonly recommended are:

» Get regular exercise. You should get at least 30 minutes of exercise on most days, if not every day.

» Maintain a healthy weight. Aim to keep your body mass index (BMI) below 25.

» Eat fresh foods, and avoid processed foods whenever possible.

» Find time to take care of yourself and reduce your stress level. Helping other people begins with helping yourself.

Take time this month to take stock of your heart health by visiting www.abellahealth.com/sclerotherapy/!

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