Women and Heart Disease

            The Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Bureau of Emergency Services wants to raise

awareness that cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the United States, claiming

about 500,000 women each year.  That is more than the next six causes of death combined –

including all forms of cancer. 

            Women can fight these statistics in several ways.  Increasing physical activity to thirty minutes a day is a level shown to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.  Developing and maintaining a successful health program between patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare organizations each play an important role in maintaining and improving heart health.  People with too much body fat are more likely to develop heart disease and stroke even if they have no other risk factors.  Obesity is unhealthy because it increases the strain on the heart.  Fad diets often make promises that are untrue or unsafe. 

            Women are less likely than men to receive recommendations from their doctors for preventive therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin therapy, and cardiac rehabilitation to protect them against heart attacks and death according to a study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.  The treatment gap is the result of doctor’s misperception that a woman’s risk is lower, even when her actual risk is calculated to be the same as a man, according to the study.  Even when a woman’s risk was the same as a man’s women were significantly more likely to be classified as at a lower risk than men.  The finding that differences in the perception of risk of heart disease accounted for the differences in preventive care was critical suggesting that, if we educate physicians to more accurately assess risk in women, they will be more likely to receive appropriate preventive care including lifestyle and drug therapy, which have been shown to save lives in both men and women.

Education and support needs to be targeted to women as well.  Lifestyle is the fundamental method to prevent heart disease.  Therefore, it is vital that we continue to address barriers to help women stop smoking, get regular physical activity, eat heart healthy, and maintain a healthy weight.  This will prevent the development of risk factors in the first place so any gender gap in treating then would become moot. 

For more information on heart health, log on to www.americanheart.org.

For more information on this or other EMS programs, please contact Bureau Chief Dan Anderson at 353-3000 or log on to www.lwfd.org.