Women and Heart Health

You’re playing hide and seek with your children. Suddenly, you’re short of breath, you have back pain and you’re sick to your stomach.

What’s happening? According to experts at the Heart Center at Sinai, you could be having a heart attack. Surprisingly, especially with women, intense chest pain is not always an indicator of an attack.

While cardiovascular disease is often thought of as a “man’s disease,” it is the number one killer of women, more than all cancers together, and the numbers are sobering.

More than 500,000 women die from cardiovascular disease each year, according to the American Heart Association. One in 2.5 women will lose their lives to heart disease yearly, compared with one in every 30 women who succumb to breast cancer. Therefore, women, and the people who love them, must be proactive in knowing the risk factors that can cause trouble.

While some heart attacks are sudden, intense and include chest pain, others start slowly, with mild pain or pressure that can disappear and return. Some women may not have any chest pain at all when having a heart attack. They may experience discomfort in the arm, back, neck or jaw. Other warning signs include shortness of breath, nausea and/or unusual and unexplained fatigue.

If you or someone you are with develops chest discomfort, especially with any of the other symptoms, call 9-1-1.

There are things in your control that you can do to try to prevent heart disease. According to the Heart Center at Sinai, eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly and trying to decrease your stress levels can be helpful. However, sometimes a family history makes you more prone to developing it through no fault of your own, so it’s especially important to see a cardiologist regularly.

In addition, there is a screening called calcium scoring which, along with other factors, can give you important information about plaque build-up in your arteries, which can slow the blood flow to your heart.

Keep your eyes on the Community Calendar on the LifeBridge Health website for information about heart screenings in your area.

For more information about the Heart Center at Sinai, call 410-601-WELL (9355).

-Helene King

To schedule an appointment with one of our highly trained physicians and find out why LifeBridge Health is Baltimore's premiere health care organization, call 410-601-WELL.

About Helene King

Helene King is a communications coordinator in the marketing department at LifeBridge Health. She is primarily responsible for working with the cardiology, endocrinology, wound care and geriatric departments. Before joining LifeBridge Health, Helene was a television news producer, who can't believe how much she likes Twitter.

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