Heart Disease: What women can do

The worst thing you can do upon learning that 1 out of 2 women will develop heart disease in her lifetime is to start worrying. Anxiety or stress can cause a racing mind, shortness of breath, cramped muscles, and high blood pressure.

A much better idea is to learn what you can about the incidence of heart disease and the lifestyles that contribute to it, so you can make wise choices for healthy behaviors and learn how to take better control.

“My advice,” says Dr. Thomas Kehl, a Monterey cardiologist, “comes down to don’t smoke, get regular exercise, eat a proper diet to lower LDL cholesterol, and maintain ideal weight. Get screened and, if necessary, treated for high blood pressure. Physical activity is important, but it doesn’t always prevent high blood pressure. Most important, you don’t want to ignore symptoms of heart disease. It’s important to have regular checkups to find evidence of any problems and then address them.”

Healthy nutrition should include a balance of protein, complex carbohydrates, fruits, and vegetables. Those who register high in cholesterol, particularly the lowdensity variety, should significantly reduce red meat, eggs, butter, and other dairy products.

“About 10 percent of people can eat these foods and nothing happens,” says Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz, medical director of the women’s health program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and one of the nation’s leading experts on women and heart disease. “They’re lucky. Another 10 percent are good as gold with their eating, and they always have high cholesterol. They’re unlucky. For those who can’t reduce cholesterol through diet, there are the statin medications (cholesterol-lowering drugs). They’re very safe, easy to take, and they reduce deaths by about 30 percent and surgeries by about 50 percent. These statins really are miracle drugs.”

Nutrition may also help control diabetes, which is a risk factor for heart disease. If your fasting blood sugar is 110-126 mg/dl (milligrams per deciliter), you are prediabetic. Considering the epidemic of obesity in the United States, it’s well worth getting your blood sugar tested and learning how to lower it through nutrition and exercise before waiting for a diabetes diagnosis.

“People don’t die from diabetes,” says Bairey Merz. “People with diabetes get heart disease and die from that. The average American is not eating more than he or she did 20 years ago, there’s just a lot less physical activity. It’s a simple formula really: You gain weight when you eat more calories than you’re expending. Walk 30 minutes a day. There’s incredibly good data that this is one of the best insurance policies you can buy.”