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How women can tell if they’re headed for a heart attack

27 Aug

by Carolyn Thomas  @HeartSisters

When nurse-researcher Dr. Jean McSweeney from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences interviewed hundreds of heart attack survivors, she discovered something surprising: 95 percent of the women she interviewed actually suspected something was very wrong in the months leading up to their attack.*

But even these early warning prodromal symptoms didn’t necessarily send women rushing to the doctor, as reported in Dr. McSweeney’s study published in the medical journal, Circulation.** And for those women who did seek help early, doctors often failed to identify their problems as being heart-related.

If you experience the warning symptoms listed below – especially if the feelings are new, worse, unexplained, or you have other heart disease risk factors – call your doctor.  And if they’re very severe, or you have signs of an impending heart attack, call 911Continue reading 

The unforgettable diagnosis: “You’re having a heart attack!”

24 Mar

Jennifer Donelan was a 36-year old television news reporter for ABC News 7 in Washington, DC, covering a dramatic story one day about a local 4-month old baby girl who had been found in her crib, unresponsive. After her live shot on the 5 o’clock newscast, Jennifer was waiting near her car when she started to feel a very strange pain in her chest. We pick up her dramatic story there, as told in Jennifer’s own words:

“I remember looking at my car and thinking: ‘I need to go home and lay down.’ Then the pain started to worsen. I took a few steps and my left arm went numb.  Continue reading 

Yale Heart Study asks why we wait so long before seeking help in mid-heart attack

17 Nov

by Carolyn Thomas

Did you know that even when experiencing textbook heart attack symptoms (like my own chest and left arm pain), people wait an average of four hours before seeking medical help?  The tragic irony is that heart patients who do best are those who can be treated within the first hour of those initial acute symptoms.

Heart attacks are dangerous and scary – so why do so many of us suffer silently for hours (and in many cases, far longer?)  This treatment-seeking delay behaviour concerns many researchers, including Yale University’s Dr. Angelo Alonzo. He told me:

“Ask people what they would do if they had a heart attack and, of course, they’d all  insist they would seek care immediately.  Sounds easy!  But in reality, few people actually do drop everything to get help.”    Continue reading 

Researchers openly mock the ‘myth’ of women’s unique heart attack symptoms

1 Nov

by Carolyn Thomas

I was a woman on a mission while covering the proceedings of the 64th Annual Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver recently.  Specifically, my mission was to track down researchers working in the area of women’s heart disease. They were, sadly, few and far between, my heart sisters, as I had to explain here earlier.

“Out of over 700 scientific papers presented at this conference, I could count on one hand the number that focused directly on women’s heart health.”

Luckily, I did track down Dr. Karin Humphries, from the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and her University of British Columbia doctoral student Mona Izadnegahdar. Their paper found, not surprisingly, that women under age 55 fare worse than their male counterparts after a heart attack.*

While chatting with me about their findings, Dr. Humphries and Mona happened to mention the “popular misconception that women and men present with different heart attack symptoms”.   Continue reading 

The concept of ‘mansplaining’ explained for you . . .

12 Oct

by Carolyn Thomas  @HeartSisters

Regular readers already know how in love I am with the “Just a Little Heart Attack” film from the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women heart health campaign this year. In three short minutes, this film manages to do what countless other heart disease awareness campaigns I’ve seen fail to pull off: to be both hilarious and frightening, packed with life-saving education on common heart attack symptoms in women. The actress Elizabeth Banks – who also directed this short film, and whose real-life mother and sister have heart issues – plays a harried, multi-tasking mother trying desperately to get her family up, dressed, fed and ready to head out the door on time, all while completely ignoring her own worsening heart attack symptoms.

Elizabeth gets every small detail of this scenario pitch-perfect, including:

  • her “I’m fine!” reassurances as she reels with nausea, chest pressure, dizziness, jaw pain, neck pain, arm pain, weakness and profuse sweating
  • her apology to the 911 phone dispatcher for being a bother
  • and (my favourite scene!) her abject dismay at surveying the messy kitchen, knowing the ambulance is already en route and she won’t have time to tidy up before it arrives!

Women who have actually lived through this will probably recognize every excruciatingly familiar moment of what it’s like to experience a heart attack.

But noted health journalism watchdog Gary Schwitzer over at Health News Review felt otherwise about this film, which he criticized in a post called Disease-Mongering Du Jour: Heart Disease in Young Women.

Gary Schwitzer

The reason Gary targeted the film as an example of “disease mongering” (defined as promoting public awareness of illnesses in order to expand the markets for those who sell or deliver treatments) was because Elizabeth Banks is just 37 years old. This age, says Gary, is far too young to be representative of most real-life heart patients. He also implied that the film’s true purpose is actually to get more of us to shop at Macy’s, a sponsor of Go Red for Women, and to convince younger women (of Elizabeth’s age) to suddenly start taking heart drugs made by Merck, another sponsor.

I and a number of other concerned heart attack survivors immediately submitted varied responses to this post, trying to explain to Gary how important such life-saving public awareness of women’s heart attack symptoms actually is to women in this target audience.

Some pointed out that women’s well-documented reluctance to seek immediate help, even in the face of significant symptoms, is an extremely serious problem leading to deadlier outcomes for women heart patients compared to their male counterparts. One reader even reminded Gary that the heart attack risk of a 37-year old woman is still more than four times greater than the risk of the average 37-year old woman having breast cancer.

But Gary’s responses to our facts, figures, stats – not to mention some personal real-life experiences of heart attack survivors about the same youthful age as Elizabeth Banks’ character – seemed increasingly exasperated as he kept repeating his original objections, while pointing out that we were likely too emotionally close to this subject and thus not fully able to comprehend – until four days later, when he decided to close the post to comments entirely.

And that’s when I learned the word mansplaining. Continue reading 

A heart film to watch before the “Pink Season” gets here

26 Sep

We’re approaching the Pink Season, my heart sisters. It’s that time of year when breast cancer awareness campaigns and their accompanying corporate marketing shills rev into high gear. Last Pinktober, we saw pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, pink-handled Tasers, and (yes, seriously) pink Smith & Wesson handguns, each somehow helping us to be more aware of breast cancer. What could possibly top what breast cancer survivor and author Barbara Ehrenreich calls this “cult of pink kitsch” again this year? (See also: Think Before You Pink for some important questions* to ask about that pink ribbon).

From my perspective as a 37+ year veteran in the public relations field, I have to say that the breast cancer folks have done a fabulous job in raising awareness of their cause. So fabulous, in fact, that they have erroneously convinced women that breast cancer is our biggest health threat.

It is not, of course.  This year, heart disease will kill six times more women than breast cancer will.  In fact, heart disease kills more women than all forms of cancer combined.  Yet heart patients and those who care for us seem to be oddly content sitting quietly on the back burner of that massive pink stovetop.

So in the interests of offering some balance here amidst a torrent of pinkwashing, I invite you to watch this 3-minute film called “Just a Little Heart Attack” from the American Heart Association.  Continue reading 

Is it a heart attack – or a panic attack?

13 Aug

by Carolyn Thomas  @HeartSisters

As a heart attack survivor who was misdiagnosed and sent home from the E.R., I now have a keen (maybe obsessive?) interest in women whose cardiac events are being dismissed by doctors. Reports in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, show that women under age 55 are SEVEN TIMES more likely than men to be misdiagnosed in mid-heart attack and sent home.*

But sometimes, women who are utterly convinced that they’re suffering from misdiagnosed heart problems may instead have conditions like panic disorder. In fact, Dr. Mohammed Memon, editor-in-chief at Medscape Reference, cites studies showing that up to 41% of patients with panic disorder seek treatment because of frightening chest pain. But how to tell the difference?  Continue reading 

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