Women Urged to be Aware of Heart Disease

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — LaTosha Caldwell thought she was too young to have a heart attack. The 34-year-old mother of three children was returning home to Jacksonville from a vacation in August 2007 when she started to feel a cramping sensation in her chest. Caldwell ignored the pain as it moved from her chest to shoulder and down her left arm over the course of three days.

“After the pain progressed and my arm began to get numb and it actually turned blue to the point where I thought ‘OK, I need to go and get this checked out,’” Caldwell said Wednesday at a press conference at the Capitol in honor of the first Women’s Heart Disease Awareness Month in Illinois.

Caldwell faced a stunning reality at the Jacksonville Emergency Room: she had suffered a heart attack.

Caldwell isn’t a likely victim of heart disease. She does not smoke, drink alcohol or have a history of heart disease in her family.

But according to Dr. Damon Arnold, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, women of all ages need to be aware they could be victims of heart disease.
The most recent statistics show more than 13,000 women in Illinois died in 2006 from heart disease.

Nationally, one in three women will succumb to heart disease according to the American Heart Association. But because people think men are more likely to have heart disease, women sometimes ignore warning signs and doctors can misdiagnose them, Arnold said.

“I remember talking to women who had suffered heart attacks and how little attention was paid to their symptoms in the emergency room,” Arnold said. “If someone tells you that you are having indigestion or you are stressed too much, go to another doctor, go to someone else and get a second opinion.”

Arnold said there are several contributing factors, among them a person’s weight, whether they smoke or not and their level of physical activity. He promoted a program to get people out walking, with pedometers in hand.

“You start getting into the activity of moving, of getting out and moving. That will actually decrease your risk of heart disease,” Arnold said.

More information about lowering the risk of heart disease can be found at http://www.americanheart.org/.

By Andrew ThomasonGateHouse News ServicePosted Feb 06, 2009 @ 02:41 PM
http://www.uticaod.com/lifestyles/x955247884/Women-urged-to-be-aware-of-heart-disease