February 3 is National Wear Red Day. It is designed to bring awareness to heart disease. It’s the leading cause of death for women in the United States. As a healthy mom of two, heart disease wasn’t on my radar until I connected with the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women.
It all happened by pure chance. I was a few months postpartum with our second and in need of a wellness overhaul. Somehow, I ran across a call for women to be part of a program for several weeks where they would meet with a dietitian, learn more about fitness, have a blood screening, visit a heart center and blog about their experiences.
So, I applied and became the youngest person in the Go Red for Women group that year. It was a great experience and truly did help me reset my wellness goals. But, it’s what I learned about heart disease in women that stuck with me.
Heart health is not “a man’s disease”
A man with grey hair clutching his chest is what came to my mind when picturing a heart attack. That was before I learned more about how heart disease affects women.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 56% of women know heart disease is their number one killer. Johns Hopkins Medicine shares insight as to how symptoms differ between men and women in relation to heart attacks.
- Both men and women experience chest pains
- Women are more likely to get less common symptoms like indigestion, shortness of breath, and back pain.
Johns Hopkins also shares several risk factors that relate to women’s heart disease, including women are at risk. We don’t recognize things like autoimmune diseases, stress, depression, or high testosterone levels before menopause as even being heart-disease risk factors for us.
It makes sense. Many of us are busy taking care of others and put our health on the back-burner. When something feels off, it’s a hassle to go to the doctor and we might have the tendency to shrug it off as nothing. That’s not a great idea when it comes to heart disease.
So, what can you do?
Spend five minutes scrolling through the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women website. Educate yourself on how women’s heart disease and heart attacks present. Consider following their account on Instagram.
Knowing more about heart health in women can benefit you. And, once you know? Share the information with the other women in your lives.
