Preventing heart trouble for women
Going red is the term used to draw attention to heart problems in women. Women die of heart problems as much as men do, but unfortunately, their symptoms are much harder to spot.
The Going Red campaign is meant to help women become aware of possible symptoms, and that the symptoms aren't the same as in men
For men and women heart attacks are the leading cause of death. This is true all over the world. Important risk factors for women are previous cardiovascular disease (such as angina, a previous heart attack or stroke), being over 50, tobacco smoking, high blood levels of certain lipids (triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein or "bad cholesterol") and low high density lipoprotein (HDL, "good cholesterol"), diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, excessive alcohol consumption, the abuse of certain drugs (such as cocaine), and chronic high stress levels.
For women the main symptoms are (and the list is shorter than it is for men) shortness of breath, weakness, a feeling of indigestion, and fatigue.
Notice that none of those sound all that life threatening - but if they are caused by trouble in the arteries, they are.
Approximately one quarter of all myocardial infarctions are silent, without chest pain or other symptoms. This of course doesn't help: you may have had one, without realizing you did.
The picture to the left is a diagram of a myocardial infarction (2) of the tip of the anterior wall of the heart (an apical infarct) after occlusion (1) of a branch of the left coronary artery (LCA, right coronary artery = RCA).
(National Wear Red Day is February 5, 2010)
National Wear Red Day: Heart Disease Awareness
- New Countdown!
- Heart Attack Video
- Going Red News Updates
- A husband tells his story of loosing his wife Shela
- Chest Pain
- Immediate Care for heart patients
- Mother and model - open heart surgery survivor tells her story
- Diet tips to prevent heart disease
- Myocardial infarction
- Heart disease Products for Women
- American Heart Association introduces women working for the Go Red campaign
- Coronary Artery Disease
- Electrocardiogram
- Wear that red dress!
- Atherosclerosis
- Stroke network
- Heart Disease Awareness products
- Share Your Heart attack stories
- Count down to Going Red day 2009 & 2010
- More by me
- More about heart attacks and women
- New Video Module
Going Red News Updates
Women may be more likely to experience emergency delays for heart care!
DALLAS, Jan. 14 - Women who called 9-1-1 complaining of cardiac symptoms were 52
percent more likely than men to experience delays during emergency medical services' (EMS)
care, according to a report in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
Read More!
Women are more likely than men to die in hospital from severe heart attack!
DALLAS, Dec. 9, 2008 - Men and women have about the same adjusted in-hospital death rate for heart attack - but women are more likely to die if hospitalized for a more severe type of heart attack, according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Read More!
We want a law passed: the Heart Disease Education, Analysis and Research, and Treatment for Women Act
American Heart Association Position
The American Heart Association, and its division the American Stroke Association, strongly supports the HEART for Women Act. This legislation would help ensure that heart disease and stroke are more widely recognized and more effectively treated in women. The association urges Congress to pass this important legislation this year.
Read More!
A husband tells his story of loosing his wife Shela
Chest Pain
In medicine, chest pain is a number of serious conditions and is generally considered a medical emergency. Even though it may be determined that the chest pain is non-cardiac in origin, this is often a diagnosis of exclusion made after ruling out more serious causes of the pain.
Immediate Care for heart patients
Rough diagram of pain zones in myocardial infarction (dark red = most typical area, light red = other possible areas, view of the chest).If you have a heart attack symptom: call 911 immediately, don't wait three hours. The longer you wait, the more the muscles affected will deteriorate. What you loose in muscle tissue will be hard to get back.
While waiting for the emergency team:
- Get into a half-sitting position with knees bent
- Open a window so there is more oxygen in the room. Widen your collar if necessary.
- Aspirin is good, but take it only AFTER you've called the paramedics. U.S. guidelines recommend a dose of 162-325 mg. Australian guidelines recommend a dose of 150-300 mg.
- If you have it, take Glyceryl trinitrate (nitroglycerin = GTN) under the tongue or use GTN spray. Angina patients should have this with them at all time.
NB: don't do both. It's either the aspirin or the nitroglycerin. Mixing medication without medical expertise is not a good idea.
What the rescuer should try and find out while waiting for the ambulance:
- name, age
- nature of the pain
- when did the symptoms start
- what was the patient doing before the symptoms started
- what help has been given (including dosage)
It's also useful to monitor the pulse, breathing, level of consciousness and if possible, the blood pressure of the patient.
Mother and model - open heart surgery survivor tells her story
Dawn Nakamura Kessler
Diet tips to prevent heart disease
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly known as a heart attack, is the interruption of blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die. This is most commonly due to occlusion (blockage) of a coronary artery following the rupture of a vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque, which is an unstable collection of lipids (fatty acids) and white blood cells (especially macrophages) in the wall of an artery. The resulting ischemia (restriction in blood supply) and oxygen shortage, if left untreated for a sufficient period of time, can cause damage or death (infarction) of heart muscle tissue (myocardium).
Classical symptoms of acute myocardial infarction include sudden chest pain (typically radiating to the left arm or left side of the neck), shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, palpitations, sweating, and anxiety (often described as a sense of impending doom). Women may experience fewer typical symptoms than men, most commonly shortness of breath, weakness, a feeling of indigestion, and fatigue. Approximately one quarter of all myocardial infarctions are silent, without chest pain or other symptoms. A heart attack is a medical emergency, and people experiencing chest pain are advised to alert their emergency medical services because prompt protection with an external defibrillator can save one's life from primary ventricular fibrillation which occurs unexpectedly in 10% of all myocardial infarctions especially during the first hours of symptoms. Contemporary treatment of many myocardial infarctions can result in survival and even good outcomes. While it is true that certain less amenable cases are very massive and rapidly fatal "widowmakers", it is also true that in small attacks with limited damage and optimal treatment the heart muscle can be salvaged.
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death for both men and women all over the world. Important risk factors are previous cardiovascular disease (such as angina, a previous heart attack or stroke), older age (especially men over 40 and women over 50), tobacco smoking, high blood levels of certain lipids (triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein or "bad cholesterol") and low levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL, "good cholesterol"), diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, excessive alcohol consumption, the abuse of certain drugs (such as cocaine and methamphetamine), and chronic high stress levels.
Immediate treatment for suspected acute myocardial infarction includes oxygen, aspirin, and sublingual glyceryl trinitrate (also known as nitroglycerin and abbreviated as NTG or GTN). Pain relief is also often given, classically morphine sulfate. However, a 2009 review about the use of high flow oxygen for treating myocardial infarction found its administration increased mortality and infarct size, calling into question the recommendation for its routine use.
The patient will receive a number of diagnostic tests, such as an electrocardiogram (ECG, EKG), a chest X-ray and blood tests to detect elevations in cardiac markers (blood tests to detect heart muscle damage). The most often used markers are the creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) fraction and the troponin I (TnI) or troponin T (TnT) levels. On the basis of the ECG, a distinction is made between ST elevation MI (STEMI) or non-ST elevation MI (NSTEMI). Most cases of STEMI are treated with thrombolysis or if possible with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI, angioplasty and stent insertion), provided the hospital has facilities for coronary angiography. NSTEMI is managed with medication, although PCI is often performed during hospital admission. In patients who have multiple blockages and who are relatively stable, or in a few extraordinary emergency cases, bypass surgery of the blocked coronary artery is an option.
The phrase "heart attack" is sometimes used incorrectly to describe sudden cardiac death, which may or may not be the result of acute myocardial infarction. A heart attack is different from, but can be the cause of cardiac arrest, which is the stopping of the heartbeat, and cardiac arrhythmia, an abnormal heartbeat. It is also distinct from heart failure, in which the pumping action of the heart is impaired; severe myocardial infarction may lead to heart failure, but not necessarily.
Heart disease Products for Women
American Heart Association introduces women working for the Go Red campaign
Coronary Artery Disease
Coronary artery disease (CAD) (or atherosclerotic heart disease) is the end result of the accumulation of plaques within the walls of the coronary arteries that supply the muscle of the heart with oxygen and nutrients. It is sometimes also called coronary heart disease (CHD), but although CAD is the most common cause of CHD, it is not the only cause.CAD is the leading cause of death worldwide. While the symptoms are noted in the advanced state of disease, most individuals with coronary artery disease show no evidence of disease for decades as the disease progresses before the first onset of symptoms, often a "sudden" heart attack, finally arises.
What happens is: after decades of slow growth of these plaques, some may rupture. The healing system of the body kicks in: platelets want to heal the wound. But the arteries are so small, that the result is a limited blood flow to the heart muscle.
The disease is the most common cause of sudden death, and is also the most common reason for death of men and women over 20 years of age. According to present trends in the United States, half of healthy 40-year-old males will develop CAD in the future, and one in three healthy 40-year-old women.
A distinction should be made between myocardial ischemia and myocardial infarction.
myocardial Ischemia means that the amount of oxygen supplied to the tissue is inadequate to supply the needs of the tissue. When the myocardium becomes ischemic, it does not function optimally. When large areas of the myocardium becomes ischemic, there can be impairment in the relaxation and contraction of the myocardium. If the blood flow to the tissue is improved, myocardial ischemia can be reversed.
myocardial Infarction means that the tissue has undergone irreversible death due to lack of sufficient oxygen-rich blood.
This is why it's so important to get help quickly: you don't want the heart tissue to be irreversibly damaged.
An individual may develop a rupture of plaque at any stage of the spectrum of coronary artery disease. The acute rupture of a plaque may lead to an acute heart attack.
Read More!
Electrocardiogram
Electrocardiography (ECG or EKG) is a transthoracic interpretation of the electrical activity of the heart over time captured and externally recorded by skin electrodes.ECG- simplified. Aswini Kumar M.D It is a noninvasive recording produced by an electrocardiographic device. The etymology of the word is derived from electro, because it is related to electrical activity, cardio, Greek for heart, and graph, a Greek root meaning "to write".
Electrical impulses in the heart originate in the sinoatrial node and travel through the intimate conducting system to the heart muscle. The impulses stimulate the myocardial muscle fibres to contract and thus induce systole. The electrical waves can be measured at electrodes placed at specific points on the skin. Electrodes on different sides of the heart measure the activity of different parts of the heart muscle. An ECG displays the voltage between pairs of these electrodes, and the muscle activity that they measure, from different directions, can also be understood as vectors. This display indicates the overall rhythm of the heart and weaknesses in different parts of the heart muscle. It is the best way to measure and diagnose abnormal rhythms of the heart,Braunwald E. (Editor), Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine, Fifth Edition, p. 108, Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders Co., 1997. ISBN 0-7216-5666-8. particularly abnormal rhythms caused by damage to the conductive tissue that carries electrical signals, or abnormal rhythms caused by electrolyte imbalances."The clinical value of the ECG in noncardiac conditions." Chest 2004; 125(4): 1561-76. PMID 15078775 In a myocardial infarction (MI), the ECG can identify if the heart muscle has been damaged in specific areas, though not all areas of the heart are covered."2005 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care - Part 8: Stabilization of the Patient With Acute Coronary Syndromes." Circulation 2005; 112: IV-89 - IV-110. The ECG cannot reliably measure the pumping ability of the heart, for which ultrasound-based (echocardiography) or nuclear medicine tests are used.
Wear that red dress!
Atherosclerosis
Atherosclerosis is commonly referred to as a "hardening" or "furring" of the arteries. It is caused by the formation of multiple plaques within the arteries.
The atheromatous plaque is divided into three distinct components:
- The atheroma ("lump of porridge", from Athera, porridge in Greek,), which is the nodular accumulation of a soft, flaky, yellowish material at the center of large plaques, composed of macrophages nearest the lumen of the artery
- Underlying areas of cholesterol crystals
- Calcification at the outer base of older/more advanced lesions.
The following terms are similar, yet distinct, in both spelling and meaning, and can be easily confused: arteriosclerosis, arteriolosclerosis, and atherosclerosis.
Arteriosclerosis is a general term describing any hardening (and loss of elasticity) of medium or large arteries;
Arteriolosclerosis is any hardening (and loss of elasticity) of small arteries;
Atherosclerosis is a hardening of an artery specifically due to a plaque. Therefore, atherosclerosis is a form of arteriosclerosis.
Atherosclerosis, though typically asymptomatic for decades, eventually produces two main problems:
- The atheromatous plaques, though long compensated for by artery enlargement, eventually lead to plaque ruptures and clots inside the artery. The clots heal and usually shrink but the artery is permanently narrowed. Sometimes it's even worse: the artery becomes closed and the organ it feeds gets insufficient blood supply.
- The artery gets larger - so large that there is too much blood. In other words: an aneurysm results.
Complications
Most commonly, an infarction: soft plaque suddenly ruptures, causing the formation of a thrombus that will rapidly slow or stop blood flow, leading to death of the tissues fed by the artery in approximately 5 minutes.
One of the most common recognized scenarios is called coronary thrombosis of a coronary artery, causing a heart attack. Even worse is the same process in an artery to the brain: a stroke.
Similarly blood flow can become limited to other limbs or organs: the legs, the arms, kidney, etc.
Yet, many infarctions involve only very small amounts of tissue. These are so small that the person having the infarction does not notice the problem. Even when they do seek help, physicians may not recognize what has happened.
Read More!
Stroke network
Heart Disease Awareness products
Share Your Heart attack stories
Did you, a friend, your mother or other female relative have heart problems? Do you recognize the problems and symptoms?
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- GrowWear GrowWear Oct 25, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
- Excellent resource for learning more about women and heart conditions. Thank you.
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- Treasures-By-Brenda Treasures-By-Brenda Apr 14, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
- I've never heard of Going Red. Thanks for sharing that with me. ~~ Blessed by Brenda!
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- RinchenChodron RinchenChodron Mar 10, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
- My father died of a heart attack in 1963 - we've come a long way since then in preventing heart attacks and saving lives with bi-pass surgery etc. Thanks for a great lens and welcome to the Activists Sound Off Group!
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- julcal julcal Feb 12, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
- So glad you got took this lens and brought it forward. the information is outstanding and the videos are great.
We can do a lot to keep our cardiovascular system healthy, but with some people, genetics plays the stronger role and just wins out. I'm an example. My diet is great, I'm a ballet dancer, etc. But i was never been able to get my cholesterol down below 250. Luckily, the PXP I take for my migraines, brought everything else into balance, including my cholesterol.
My Dad, on the other hand, ate meat and potatoes his entire life and I mean Crisco! Didn't get much exercise because of a plane accident while in the Air Force. His numbers were great, lived to be 91. When people ask me what he died of i say - old age :)
We need to take as much control as possible and take care of our bodies, and believe me, I do, but genetics are hard to combat sometimes.
Thanks this lens, and bringing this to the front line 5*
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- monarch13 monarch13 Feb 12, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
- Great info and an important topic. 5 stars and rolled to "Health Promotion Ideas"
The rest of the month is heart disease month as well - and this year there are go red activities all through February.
(National Wear Red Day is February 6, 2010)
More by me
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Stop Going Red with embarrassment
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Do you go red in the face in any social situation? Does your skin light up whenever you have to speak in public or do a presentation? There are two things to remember: A lot of people have this issue You can learn to control it (to an extent)
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Health and Beauty Lensography
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Health and beauty go together - at least: health contributes to beauty. Ultimately, for most of us, health is more important. What follows are my lenses about both topics.
More about heart attacks and women
- Risk Assessment Tool
- This risk assessment tool uses information from the Framingham Heart Study to predict a person's chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years. This tool is designed for adults aged 20 and older who do not have heart disease or diabetes. To find your risk score, enter your information in the calculator.
- Go Red For Women
- Go Red For Women celebrates the energy, passion and power we have as women to band together to wipe out heart disease and stroke.
- Cardiac disorder symptoms in women are fewer than in men
- Cardiac disorder symptoms in women are fewer than in men, making early diagnosis difficult due to the peculiar manifestation of the symptoms, a noted cardiologist said on Friday.
- WomenHeart
- WomenHeart is a nonprofit, patient advocacy organization with thousands of members nationwide, including women heart patients and their families, health care providers, advocates and consumers committed to helping women live longer, healthier lives. Women Heart supports, educates and advocates on behalf of the 44 million American women living with or at risk of heart disease.







