It was almost enough to force me right out the door to the nearest Tim Hortons for a couple of gooey Maple Dips. Must make sure that my thighs don’t get too skinny, because Danish researchers have just announced that chubby thighs can reduce the risk of developing heart disease. Read more to see if this is on the level
The CBC (our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) did a report this week about women and heart disease that included an interview with Dr. Beth Abramson, a Toronto cardiologist and spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. She was responding to results of a new study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that suggests women are almost twice as likely to die within 30 days of a heart attack compared with men. Dr. Abramson said:
“It’s sometimes hard to sort out if there is a difference in biology between men and women, or if there is a gender bias.“
The study’s lead author, Dr. Jeffrey Berger of New York University Medical Center, votes for biology. Continue reading “Biology or bias? Women twice as likely to die after heart attack”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
These days, whenever I tell my audiences about the hours leading up to my hospitalization for a heart attack last year, I ask them to guess what I would have done had those horrific cardiac symptoms been happening to my daughter (or my next-door neighbour, or even a perfect stranger) during that endless cross-country flight back home to the West Coast. Would I have patted her grim, sweaty face and whispered:
“Just try to hang on, honey. We’ll be home in nine hours…”
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No, my Heart Sisters, I would have been screaming bloody murder for the Air Canada crew to get help immediately, even if it meant turning the damned plane around. But since these attacks were happening to me, and not to somebody else, I chose instead the unwise and potentially fatal option of just slinking down in my seat, very still, hour after hour, trying not to die. Continue reading “Could ‘goodism’ and self-sacrifice be linked to women’s heart disease outcomes?”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Having a heart attack felt nothing like I thought it would feel. For one thing, unlike sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating and you stop breathing, during my heart attack (myocardial infarction), my heart continued beating, and I was walking, talking and conscious throughout despite horrific symptoms – so how could I possibly be having a heart attack?
Like most women, I’d never really thought about my heart – except maybe when running up that killer Quadra Street hill with my running group. Yet heart disease kills six times more women than breast cancer each year (in fact, it kills more women than all forms of cancer combined).
Women need to know all the potential symptoms of a heart attack – both typical and atypical. And by the way, I’ve stopped using the word “atypical“ to describe any non-chest pain symptom that women experience during a heart attack, because as paramedic and documentary filmmaker (“A Typical Heart“) Cristina D’Alessandro likes to say:
“Why are our cardiac symptoms called ‘atypical’ when women are more than half the population?”
I asked some female survivors to share their very first symptoms. Their heart attack stories may surprise you. If you need help translating some of the heart jargon, visit my patient-friendly jargon-free glossary of cardiology terms and abbreviations.
Heart Sisters 