To be sure here you will got information from the great reference which have called The American Heart Association. You know
One woman in America has a heart attack every minute. More women die of heart disease in America than the next four causes of death combined, including all types of cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer's disease and accidents.
America's worsening obesity epidemic has hindered progress in fighting the disease. Death rates among women 35 to 54 are rising because of heart disease -- reversing a 40-year trend.
The American Heart Association has devoted the month of February to heart awareness. It starts, the experts say, by doing your part. Know your numbers and what puts you at risk. Develop a healthy diet. Know the warning signs. Call 911 if you feel you have any of the symptoms of a heart attack.
It's advice Osypa Shalay wishes she'd heeded.
Her two grown sons have always come first. On Jan. 18, one had a birthday, the other was having surgery. She awoke early that day with symptoms she dismissed as those related to acid reflux.
The pain in her chest burned all the way up to her jaw. Shalay, 69, of Sterling Heights took a reflux pill, then two aspirin and went to work. She acknowledged thinking at the time that she could be having a heart attack. But she kept dismissing the idea.
"We always felt heart disease didn't run in our family," she said. Shalay also had been tested six months before and she and her doctor were pleased with her cholesterol measurements.
After a restless night of sleep, Shalay awoke with pain that had spread to her upper back and continued in her neck.
Her doctor gave her a muscle relaxer, said the symptoms could be arthritis in her neck and told her to return the next day if the pain continued. She took a Tums and headed to work again.
By the following day, "I just didn't feel good," said Shalay, who manages a banquet center. She called her doctor at 8:30 a.m. and he told her to come to his office immediately. An electrocardiogram showed problems and he told her, "'I think you're having a heart attack and we're calling an ambulance,' " she recalled.
"If I had stayed home that day, I would have died at home," Shalay said her doctor later told her.
Doctors at Royal Oak's Beaumont Hospital found one artery almost completely blocked. Through angioplasty, they were able to open it up and keep it that way with the permanent implantation of two tiny metal stents, or coils.
She's now on cholesterol-lowering, blood pressure and blood-thinning medicines. She's returning to exercise that she had stopped because of back pain.
She is losing weight, changing her lifestyle and reducing the salt in her diet.
"Food tastes horrible without salt but I can live with that," she said. She also reduced her stress levels by working from home.
Soon she's going to begin rehabilitation therapy.
"I'm doing fantastic," she said last week. She also will never ignore her symptoms again.
Janine Krolikowski thought she knew heart disease. It ran in her family. She also worked in health care for 18 years as a cardiovascular ultrasound technician.
With good or borderline cholesterol, Krolikowski, 53, of Royal Oak managed her higher risk of heart disease with diet and exercise and a blood pressure medicine. She developed gestational diabetes during the first of her two pregnancies, but the problem went away and she didn't consider that another risk factor. Experts now advise otherwise.
In April 2004, Krolikowski thought she pulled a muscle between her shoulder blades while doing yard work.
"It felt like waking up with a kink in my neck," she said.
The pain was there when she woke the next morning but "I was negating everything. I was ignoring it," Krolikowski said.
She vomited and sweated profusely, but after taking two aspirin, her symptoms subsided.
"I told myself, 'This could be cardiac-related,' " so she called her doctor.
"I didn't call 911," she confessed.
The doctor's office gave her an appointment two hours later -- time that allowed her to take a shower, do her hair and makeup and shave her legs. "I figured if I'm not coming home, I'd be ready," she said.
An electrocardiogram at her doctor's office found nothing abnormal. But her doctor advised her to go to the nearest emergency department just to be sure.
Her husband picked her up and drove her there, and additional blood work found nothing "that screamed at them like a heart attack." But another electrocardiogram discovered that her heart wasn't contracting as it should. She underwent an immediate angioplasty and stent procedure to open her virtually clogged artery.
"It was a very humbling experience," Krolikowski said.
Krolikowski now walks 30 to 35 minutes a day, eats healthier and works to eliminate stress.
"I've always been a Type A personality, and everything was very controlled," she said. Now, "I live in my day. I don't live in yesterday or a few days forward. Everything can change, so why worry about it? That allows me to take little moments in my day, be thankful for what I do right."
Chosen by the American Heart Association as one of its 2011 spokeswomen for its Go Red for Women heart awareness campaign, Krolikowski has spent the month teaching other women about heart disease.
"Eighty percent of heart disease is preventable," she said. "But you need to make choices that will allow you to see your grandchildren. I want women to understand they can make a difference by empowering themselves to make a change so they won't experience what I've gone through, along with their mothers and sisters."
Contact Patricia Anstett: 313-222-5021 or panstett@freepress.com
ON THE COVER: Janine Krolikowski, 53, of Royal Oak had a heart attack at age 46 and is a national spokeswoman for the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign.
Source:http://www.freep.com/article/20110220/FEATURES08/102200319/Heart-health-What-women-need-know-avoid-becoming-statistic
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