Every year, National “Wear Red Day” is held the first Friday of February to raise awareness of women’s heart health. Today Mayor Stephanie Minor gathered with members of the American Heart Association in Clinton Square to raise awareness and to offer reduced price skating for everyone visibly wearing red. Heart disease is the leading killer in women, claiming the life of one woman every 80 seconds. Interventional Cardiologist, Michael Fischi says the increase of awareness has helped to fight heart disease and has led to women being cognizant about their body.
“So it’s important to know you’re fast in glucose. Are you pre diabetic? Know your blood pressure? Are you maybe even pre hypertensive? Are you hypertensive? Knowing your lipids; do you have hyperlipidemia? Knowing your waistline because waistline is, even though it’s not fashionable to talk about that, that’s actually a very predictive marker of risk as well.”
Although men and women can be inflicted with heart disease, Dr. Fischi says women have distinctive factors that make heart disease more prevalent in women.
“There are certain types of stress heart attacks that are much more common in women than in men. The fancy name for it is Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. It’s basically a type of heart attack that usually occurs in the form of severe stress.”
He says smoking and diabetes are huge risk factors and will most likely lead to heart disease. The doctor says having chest pain among various other symptoms shouldn’t be disregarded.
“... Symptoms in the form of chest pressure or chest tightness. The sensation is, there’s a weight on your chest that you can’t get off. Maybe a discomfort in your arm or your shoulder or between the shoulder blades or on your neck radiating to your jaw. Nausea, vomiting, severe sweating.”
The American Heart Association says heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined. Annually, 1 out of every 3 women die from cardiovascular disease. For more information on heart disease in women visit goredforwomen.org.
