When we think of a victim of heart disease, we tend to think of men, but unfortunately, heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women in the United States.  Heart disease includes the narrowing of the arteries that bring oxygen to the heart, heart failure, diseases of the heart muscles, inborn defects, and other conditions.  Five hundred thousand American women die each year from heart diseases, and the risks increase as a woman ages.

The Change of Life

The Cleveland Clinic Heart Center explains that menopause changes the risks for women and heart disease.  Post-menopause, a woman’s body experiences reduced estrogen production, changes in cholesterol levels, changes in the structure of blood vessels, and increased production of the clotting agent fibrinogen. 

No one yet knows exactly how much a woman’s risk is affected by each of these changes, but they are definitely associated with greater heart disease risk.  Women who have gone through menopause are two to three times more likely to suffer heart disease than a pre-menopausal woman of the same age.  Women that have had a hysterectomy experience these same raised risk factors. 

In the past, scientists studying women and heart disease hypothesized that hormone replacement therapy could help post-menopausal women fight heart disease; however, long-term studies do not confirm that preliminary idea and doctors no longer recommend hormone replacement therapy to battle heart disease.  Menopause we cannot change, but other risk factors are under our control.

Using hormonal birth control (the pill or the patch) is considered safe for women under thirty-five. As of now, doctors do not have proof that birth control hormones can increase or decrease problems for women and heart disease, especially after the age of thirty-five.  When talking about your heart disease risk factors with your doctor, get his or her opinion on your personal situation.   

A Change of Lifestyle

Scientists studying women and heart disease find that women are knowledgeable about what lifestyles are associated with heart disease, but are also prone to having those lifestyles.  For example, according to the National Institutes of Health, fifty-six million American women have high cholesterol, 33% of women have high blood pressure, and 62% of women are overweight.  Despite these risks, women are less physically active than men, on average. 

For women, as for men, there are a few good guidelines to a healthier heart.  Habits such as not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight by regular activity or exercise, cutting down on the fatty foods, and getting your cholesterol tested can dramatically help prevent heart disease.  Don’t become another statistic about women and heart disease. 

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Rheumatic heart disease, also called rheumatic fever, occurs when an untreated strep throat infection migrates to the joints and heart, causing fever, muscle aches, and possible permanent heart valve damage.  Just as “rheumatism” refers to joint pain, “rheumatic” fever gets its name because one of its main symptoms is actually pain in the joints rather than the heart. 

The National Institute of Health estimate that rheumatic heart disease develops in about 3% of untreated strep throat infections in the United States. Because mainly young people get strep, accordingly rheumatic heart disease mostly strikes people aged between six and fifteen years old.

Most people in the west who get strep will never develop rheumatic heart disease, because the strep throat infection is treated effectively with antibiotics.  However, if fever, irregular heart beat, nodes under the skin, and other symptoms appear after a strep infection, a doctor will perform lab tests to diagnose rheumatic fever. 

Penicillin treats rheumatic heart disease symptoms, including the contraction of the heart, which may damage heart valves; however, there is no cure for the disease, and patients must continue with penicillin injections.  Some doctors argue this treatment should continue for the rest of the patient’s life.  Left untreated, besides the symptoms of physical pain, rheumatic heart disease can cause permanent heart valve damage.  Without surgery, heart valve damage can lead to fatal heart failure. 

Cases And Treatment Worldwide

Doctors working with the Australian National Heart Foundation are working on a vaccine to prevent rheumatic fever.  After an unexplained jump in the number of cases among the Aboriginal population of Australia from 2004 to 2006, doctors launched the world’s most advanced investigation of rheumatic heart disease.

In New Zealand as well, rheumatic fever is a problem among some populations, and the treatment there is penicillin shots every month for ten years.  One famous rugby player, a childhood victim of rheumatic heart disease, admits to “getting lazy” about having his shots, and the symptoms of the disease returned to him as an adult.  Luckily, he knew his problem and how to get help.  Some people, especially those with little access to health care, simply suffer through fever attacks, and fall victim to heart valve failure. 

In fact, the World Heart Federation in Geneva, Switzerland calls rheumatic fever a disease born of poverty.  Though it is easily prevented by a good strep throat treatment, many young people of the world do not have access to the healthcare that would keep their heart valves healthy and extend their lives. 

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Reversing heart disease can be done by adopting a few lifestyle changes.  By avoiding certain risk factors that put you in harm’s way of the disease to begin with, you can turn back the clock, so to speak, and continue to live a long, healthy life despite having a heart disease.

There are many different kinds of heart disease, but one of the factors that leads to most heart disease is a blockage to the arteries that feed blood to the heart.  When the heart no longer gets a fresh supply of blood, it can die, and the result is a heart attack.  By unclogging these arteries, you are essentially reversing heart disease and, therefore, healing your heart.

How You Can Reverse Heart Disease

Diets high in saturated fats and cholesterol can contribute to the blockage that causes most diseases of the heart.  Reversing heart disease can be as simple as cleaning up your diet, by eating more fruits and vegetables, foods with a higher fiber content, and staying away from foods with too much saturated fat.  By changing to a cleaner diet, you are one step closer to reversing a heart disease that has already claimed so many lives.

Another technique that works in reversing heart disease is getting more exercise.  When you exercise, you increase your cardiovascular health, and your heart begins to work better.  Exercise can be had anywhere, anytime, simply walk instead of drive your car, take the stairs instead of the elevator, or just walk around the block every night after dinner.

A more drastic move for reversing heart disease is surgery.  Surgeons have been able to unblock arteries or bypass clogged arteries to improve blood flow to the heart.  In many cases, surgery helps those who are afflicted with this horrible disease; however, for surgery to be effective, the heart disease must be caught early, just like most other diseases.  Surgery can be an effective means for reversing heart disease, but the most effective way is to adopt good living habits once you find out you have it.

By adopting good living habits, eating right, getting more exercise, and reducing stress levels, you can go on to live a long, healthy, productive life even if you already have heart disease.  Reversing heart disease does not need to inhibit your life or hold you back in any way; instead, by adopting good living habits, you can improve your life by turning back time to look and feel better. 

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A heart disease risk factor is a addiction a person follows that makes them more prone to this horrible disease.  It’s said that more than 58 million Americans experience from several kind of heart disease, and it is the number one cause of death of American adults.  Heart disease kills more women than the other five top killers combined.  For this reason, it’s critical to identify what we can about this killer so that we might stop it from hurting any more people.

Examples of a heart disease risk factor comprise smoking, eating foods high in fat, and not getting enough exercise.  Risk factors harm your heart, your overall health, and essentially, kill you slowly.  A heart disease risk factor must be avoided if we hope to avoid this horrible disease. 
Risk Factors

The following are confirmed independent risk factors for the growth of CAD, in order of decreasing importance:

Hypercholesterolemia (specifically, serum LDL concentrations)
Smoking
Hypertension (high systolic pressure seems to be most significant in this regard)
Hyperglycemia (due to diabetes mellitus or otherwise)
Form A Behavioural Patterns, TABP. Added in 1981 as an independant risk factor after a majority of research into the field discovered that TABP’s were twice as likely to cause CHD than any other personality sort.
Hereditary differences in such diverse aspects as lipoprotein structure and that of their associated receptors, homocysteine processing/metabolism, etc.
Significant, but indirect risk factors comprise:

Lack of exercise
Stress
Diet rich in saturated fats
Diet low in antioxidants
Obesity
Men over 60; Women over 65
Why Should You know About Risk Factors?

Heart disease risk factors are vital to study so that you can avoid the types of behaviors that bring on this disease.  By adopting certain standard of living changes, we can stay away from the heart disease risk factor that is harming you minute by minute, without you even knowing about more than likely.

Also, it’s vital to note that a certain factor can be a heart disease risk factor and most people aren’t even aware of it.  Not many recognize that there are certain factors that can’t be helped.  An instance of this sort of heart disease risk factor includes age; you can’t help how old you are. 

Similarly, you can’t help what family you come from either.  That’s right, heart disease can be genetic and could come from your father, your mother, or your grandmother.  That means that heredity can also be a heart disease risk factor.  These risk factors are vital to understand so that we can track this disease and stop it with more scientific research.  Research will lead to more medicines and procedures that will help in stopping this disease.    

Just because there are risk factors that can’t be helped doesn’t mean we should just give up.  Curb the risk factors that you can control such as the smoking, the over eating, and the lack of exercise, and let’s help stop this disease from spreading.

Heart disease is a disease that can, for the most part, be prevented.  It’s critical to study the heart disease risk factor that plagues you the most.  What are you doing that could be hurting you?  Try to constrain the habit or cut it out completely, and your heart will thank you for it.

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To understand the seriousness of heart disease in women, we need to first look at the data.  According to current studies, it’s found that more than 8 million American women are currently living with several form of heart disease.  In fact, heart disease is the leading cause of death of American women and more women than men die of heart disease each year.

Heart disease in women can be diagnosed and treated but the key to staying healthy is prevention.  Once a woman finds out that she has heart disease, it can already be too late. Odds are, that woman has engaged in a number of risk factors throughout her lifetime that contributed to her contracting the disease.  Such risk factors that escalation the risk of heart disease in women consist of cigarette smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, not being active, diabetes and obesity.

Women need to understand that these risk factors need to be avoided as much as possible because they are so susceptible to the disease.  Heart disease in women doesn’t need to be as much of an epidemic it has become.  With just a few lifestyle changes, all women can once more live long and healthy lives without the risk for heart disease. 

Of course, there are other risk factors that increase the risk for heart disease in women that can’t be helped.  These risk factors consist of age, heredity, the effects of menopause, etc.  By knowing this, women should arm themselves with as much information as they can so that they can identify just what they are dealing with.

Heart disease in women doesn’t need to have such a high morality rate. 

By adopting a few lifestyle changes such as getting more exercise, eating right, quitting smoking and decreasing stress levels, women can drastically lower the propensity for heart disease.  This is important not only for heart disease but for other diseases as well. 

Heart disease in women does claim many lives each and every year but the disease can be manageable and preventable.  Women need to study and learn as much as they can.  They need to be educated.  Not many women see that they have such a high probability of getting the disease.  All women need to see that they have a greater risk of getting the disease than men.  By learning about and knowing this, women will have a step up on this horrible disease and, maybe one day, heart disease in women will be a thing of the past.

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Cigarette smoking is a major cause of heart diseases, such as heart attack, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.

Several Heart Disease Facts Due to Smoking:

- Tobacco contains more then 4,000 chemicals, many are known to be poisonous.
- Nicotine increases blood pressure, because the carbon monoxide makes the heart beat faster and takes the place of oxygen in the blood.
- Tar in tobacco causes cancer, which can be a lethal disease.
- Smoking for long periods of time will cause artery clogging, which in turn leads to heart attacks from overworking the heart by reducing its oxygen supply. It also makes clots more likely to form in the blood vessels increasing the risk of potentially lethal changes in the heart beat.
- Those who are regular, long-time smokers have a 70% greater risk of death from coronary heart disease than non-smokers.
- 80% of new smokers are children and adolescents who are trying to copy a parent or other hero figure.

Passive smoking can cause heart disease, and those who do not smoke directly but inhale smoke from others are at direct risk, as well.

- Living with an active smoker increases one’s risk of heart disease by 30%.
- Inhaling smoke is especially dangerous for children and unborn babies (pregnant women) and can lead to low birth weight babies, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, and middle ear infection.

Stop Smoking to Improve Your Health and Increase Your Life Span

Many choose smoking to cope with stress, loose weight, because of poor self-esteem, or simply to fit in the friend’s circle by looking ‘cool.’ Most of the first time smokers get their first cigarette from someone else or find it readily available in the house from a smoking parent.
 
Here are some great reasons to stop smoking now:

- Smoking causes heart disease, which can lead to a heart attack.
- Your smoking can cause the same bad effects on your family and friends around you who don’t smoke.
- Save money from not buying cigarettes – if you do the math, depending on how much you smoke, you are looking at couple of thousand dollars a year.

Getting Help

If you think you cannot do it with just plain will power and/or if you are a heavy smoker, get help before you start so you can successfully quit the addiction.

- Check with your doctor first and see what course of action he/she recommends.
- Nicotine patch/pills/chewing gums are a great substitute.
- Try to quit along with a friend or a group.

Cigarette smoking can cause you to die early and those who live close to you to inhale the smoke – that in itself should be reason enough to quit. Enjoy a healthy life and offer clean air to your family and friends – quit smoking today.

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