Women & Heart Disease

[Tubby & Peanut's Mom]

Sasha the Cat's sister recently died of a heart attack. As I was responding to her, I started in on a whole post about heart disease in women - one of my pet...projects I guess you'd call it. I decided to start a new thread to not take away from her grief, so here goes.

Almost 10 years ago now my mother had a heart attack. Thankfully she survived it - and the....whatever you call 5...bypass surgery and has been doing great ever since. But the biggest thing it did was open my eyes to the fact that heart disease is the biggest killer of women.

If you ask women what disease they fear the most, the biggest percentage of them will say breast cancer. When in fact, many, many more of them will be affected by, and die from, heart disease.

And you can't say, well, I'm healthy, I exercise, eat right and my cholesterol is low, because that describes my mother exactly. I believe the fact that she walks 5 miles evey morning greatly contributed to her survival. There was absolutely no indication - at least that we knew of. She said she had felt similar a few times after her walk, but usually laid down and the feeling passed. This time, however, the feeling didn't pass and she ended up in the hospital having bypass surgery.

So I guess the point of this post is, please, all women out there, and even all the young girls, be concious that heart disease is not a "man's disease" and it can and will affect you somehow, someway someday. Have your cholesterol checked, and there are now other tests that can indicate early stages of heart disease. Talk to your doctor about them, even if you feel you are not at risk.

I now know that I'm at great risk. Not only because of my mother's heart attack, but because my father had one also, and my grandfather at 3 of them and my great uncle died of one...and it goes on.

Please, not to dimish the seriousness of breast cancer, but please, broaden your minds to the other diseases that so affect women.

[luckies4me]

Life is so scary. My father has heart disease and has already had several surgeries on his heart. I know I really need to start exercing because I am pretty lazy. If it weren't for Dylan and me having to get outside for his sake I would be even worse. Children can be great motivators! A friend and mine are actually going to start working out here at my house with Pilates tapes soon.

I try to eat healthy. I never use salt on my food, avoid things with high cholesterol in them, and saturated fat etc.

[carole]

Interesting thread, funny thing is my mother is the one with hereditary high cholestrol, and yet my Dad had the heart attack, mum has had the BC, but has a history of strokes in the family, so yes I am aware of this disease, effecting many women.

Just had my cholestrol reading done 3.5 which is considered really good, however my mother was fine at my age too, so who knows???

My adopted aunt, had a major heart attack at the doctors office ten yrs ago, she is a smoker, and would have died had she not been there at the time, there was nothing they could do to repair her heart, as the damage is too far gone, she is still alive and unfortunatley still smokes, but she is 75 now, and still going strong, some people just beat the odds i guess

[Kater]

This is old news but..... HEART DISEASE IS REVERSIBLE! I'm always suprised by how few people are aware of this so I'm working to spread the news.....

On July 21, 1990, The Lancet published the findings of Dean Ornish, M.D., who demonstrated that heart disease can actually be reversed without medicines.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.pcrm.org/health/Preventiv...t_disease.html

Heart diets that include animal products are much less effective, usually only slowing the process of atherosclerosis.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/v...ian_foods.html