Let go of a grudge
A recent study from University College London found that frequent conflict in any close relationship—with your spouse, your sister, your best friend—increases a woman’s risk of heart attack by up to 34 percent. And researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor found that those who didn’t trust people had higher levels of C-reactive protein and other known markers for harmful inflammation of the heart. Another danger: staying mad. “The evidence that bad relationships and negative emotions affect the heart just continues to mount,” says Tim Smith, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “And the more frequent, the more extreme and the more long-lasting these feelings are, the worse it is for your health.” A great reason to let bygones be bygones.
Stop worrying about everything
Researchers have long known that chronic job stress may hurt your heart, but they’ve now linked anxiety and worry—even over everyday things like cleaning your house—to cardiovascular trouble. “Anxiety and negative emotions increase blood pressure and cholesterol, and trigger the release of stress hormones,” says Smith, who studies how emotions affect health. “Those things damage the lining of the coronary arteries, which in turn makes you more susceptible to heart attacks.” Experts agree that this kind of stress may be more common among women than men, and we do little to counteract it. “Women are so busy taking care of the things they’re anxious about—and taking care of the rest of the people in their families—that there’s no room left to care for themselves,” says Susan Bennett, M.D., director of the Women’s Heart Program at The George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. “With my heart patients, the most frequent referral I make is to a counselor. I tell them their stress and anxiety are contributing to making their hearts sick.”
Move a little more every day
Even if you’re at a healthy weight, not exercising is simply bad for your heart. In fact, a lack of physical activity is now listed as a major risk factor in the new guidelines from the American Heart Association, putting it in league with smoking and eating a high-fat diet. Why the alarm? Experts now know that in addition to strengthening your heart and lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, exercise can actually diminish or reverse other damage, burn up stress hormones before they can hurt your arteries and even slightly reduce the negative effects of smoking—in short, exercise just makes your heart work better. “This is a major shift in what we’ve said to women for years,” says Lori Mosca, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia and lead author of the new guidelines. “We want you to adopt healthy lifestyles in your twenties and thirties so I don’t have to treat your blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes in your forties and fifties, or your heart attacks after that.” To keep your heart healthy, you need at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day—anything that gets your heart rate up, says Dr. Mosca. (If you also need to lose weight, you may need more than that.)
Accept that you’re at risk
“In about half of all fatal heart attacks, people die outside the hospital because they don’t get treated soon enough,” says Elizabeth Nabel, M.D., director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. And one study found that it takes women 20 minutes longer than men to get to the emergency room during a heart attack. Part of the problem is that many women don’t recognize typically female symptoms (see below)—but more often, women are afraid to admit their vulnerability. “Many women are just plain in denial about their risk,” says Dr. Nabel. If you are obese, live a sedentary lifestyle or have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or a history of smoking, you need to acknowledge you are at increased risk of dying of heart disease. Doing so means you’re more likely to discuss these risk factors with your doctor and take steps to reverse the damage they may cause.
Bone up on your family tree
Several men in my family died young from heart disease, but I’ve always figured I was safe because I’m a woman. But during one particularly terrifying interview, I learned the truth: Having any close family members with heart disease can increase a woman’s risk—and the more relatives with heart problems you have, the more danger you’re in. After hearing this I put a leash on my dog and ran out the door for my first jog in eight years. My heart throbbed and my chest burned, but I was finally exercising. As Smith told me, you can’t change your genes, but you can change your behavior and lower your risk. Now I just need to keep it up.
_________________________
Five signs you could be having a heart attack
Women often have different symptoms than men. In addition to the chest pain—which occurs in a majority of heart attacks—here are five common signs of female heart trouble:
- Extreme fatigue—often for days or weeks before the heart attack
- Nausea or stomach pain
- Jaw or neck pain
- Shortness of breath and dizziness
- Heartburnlike symptoms
No comments:
Post a Comment