Heart & Stroke – Women and Heart Disease

Nov 9, 2017 @ 09:36

Dan Ingram of the Heart & Stroke Foundation SSM was in Wawa Tuesday evening to speak about Women and Heart Disease at a presentation at the Gilmartin Funeral Home. The Heart & Stroke Foundation recognizes that women are living longer, but also face heart disease and stroke.

Contary to public belief that breast cancer is the most important health issue for women to be concerned about – Heart Disease and Stroke kills more than seven times as many Canadian women as breast cancer.

Women also have other reasons to be concerned. Women often say that they are too busy caring for their families, work and other concerns to take time for themselves for diagnosis, tests or treatment until they have a major cardiac event. Some of the other risk factors that women should consider are:

• Birth Control Pills
• Pregnancy (pre-clampsia, gestational diabetes)
• role of estrogen (HRT)
• after menopause
• prior incident

Everyone should consider risk factors such as: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, overweight/obese, smoking, physical inactivity, stress, and alcohol consumption.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation is working with support from the federal government to invest $5 million into women’s heart health research, as previously women made up less than 1/3 of all studies. A national awareness campaign is being promoted to help educate women about heart disease and stroke as well as give them the tools that they need to help prevent a heart attack or stroke.