Letters to the Editor
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Not just for vanity
This problem is partly a consequence of our obsession with fitness as a way to become thin. Most women don't believe heart disease will happen to them, or that it couldn't happen for several decades. Many view nutrition and exercise purely as a way to lose weight or to avoid gaining weight.
The problem is that women who are satisfied with their figures -- either because they are already thin or because they are comfortable being a bit overweight -- have little motivation to change their diet and start exercising. And women who try to lose weight use unhealthy methods (like diet pills) because they're aiming for a lower jean size, not for health.
If we truly focused on health instead of body size, people might understand that exercise isn't just about vanity. It's about how long you live. It's a shame that we have trivialized diet and exercise to the point where we ignore the health of our hearts.
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Ambiguous syntax
A woman's heart attack is twice as likely to cause death than a man's heart attack - that is true. However, the way that you've written it - "we are more likely than men to die of heart attacks" - is ambiguous and allows the interpretation that the number of fatal heart attacks in women is greater than in men. That isn't true.
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Being More Insistent
Its the 21st century, but still most female medical complaints are attributed to either our psyches or our gynecological health. I am sure many of these women go in with chest pain and are told it is "stress" or menopause.
I know several women who never see a G.P., only a gyn. They think they are being proactive about their health, but they are neglecting the other 90% of their bodies.
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Inherited habites!
Smoking and couch-potato laziness are inherited habits, but they are passed down from parents to children by the example that the parents set, not through genetics. If you smoke, then the odds are good that your children will also smoke, but very few kids of non-smoking parents choose to smoke. I don't smoke at all, or drink alcohol in the house or ever in front of my kids for exactly that reason. I also stay off of the couch as much as possible, and limit the amount of TV that my kids watch, so that they will start off being active rather than sedentary at as young an age as possible. Most adults may not realize just how damaging the examples we set are to the next generation. If you abuse your wife, the odds are good that when your son grows up, he will express the same behavior towards the women in his life.
Behavior traits are passed down, but anyone can realize that they have behavior problems, correct their deficiencies, and prevent them from getting passed on to their children.
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symptoms - women may not have chest pain during heart attack
There is sex difference in heart attack symptoms. The classic symptoms of left arm pain and thoracic constriction tend toward reliability in male victims. Female victims have a tendency to report only generalized discomfort and nausea. If one is not aware of this difference in heart attack symptoms the female symptoms could be confused with stress. I think that this means that there should be more attention paid to sex difference in diagnosis and treatment, and more attention paid to making acute care personnel aware of the different symptoms women and men may report. Female patients may need to specifically insist on being checked for heart attack.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=19561
http://www.healthy-heart-guide.com/heart-attack-symptoms-in-women.html
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Heart Attacks and Women
The information about women and fatal heart attacks: ""For instance, women are twice as likely as men to have fatal heart attacks" has been in the media as well as common medical for several years now.
I would assume that a lot of women are unfamliar with the statistics either beacue they don't have the disease or that they don't have adequate medical coverage. According to expert medical information, a woman's first heart attack is more than likely the last that she'll ever have because the first one will kill her.
Pretty grim statistics!
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Harris, habitually shallow
women with a family history of heart disease are less likely than men to change risk-increasing habits such as smoking and not getting up from the futon. ... Makes sense intuitively -- the habits may be "inherited,"
Huh? The point of the article and the only new hypothesis was a gender disparity for heritable traits. Intuitive? Did Harris really say "I always suspected women inherited more bad habits" and how exactly is she a Women's Issues columnist?
(my gloss here) we need to do a better job of getting the word out to women that smoking, say, isn't just bad for you, it's bad for you.
Ahh, no. Good health information needs to be delivered to everybody.
If the hypothesis is true, that there is an underlying mechanism for women inheriting bad habits at greater rates, genetic or cultural, "getting the word out" more won't necessarily address the problem.
We've had the word out that obesity is unhealthy since forever. But obesity rates continue to skyrocket, and in fact many people, especially women, have even formed social support groups to controvert the scientific data and claim obesity is fine, through various euphemisms such as "full figured" and "Reubenesq" and such.
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Might poverty and insurance status be important?
We know that women are more likely than men to be uninsured and living in poverty, so I wonder if that plays a role.
Granted, the health habits emphasized here - quitting smoking, reducing fat consumption, exercising more - don't necessarily require money or health insurance, but being financially secure and having access to health services probably make it much easier to make lifestyle changes. Getting an annual physical at which your doctor tells you why you need to change your habits can be a powerful motivator (it worked for me), and some insurers offer workshops or other resources on exercise, nutrition, and smoking cessation. Plus, I'm sure it's harder to think about your long-term health when you're wondering how you're going to pay the rent.
The New York Times' 2005 "Class Matters" series included a fascinating article on how three people of different social classes fared after having heart attacks:
Architect, utility worker, maid: heart attack is the great leveler, and in those first fearful moments, three New Yorkers with little in common faced a single, common threat. But in the months that followed, their experiences diverged. Social class - that elusive combination of income, education, occupation and wealth - played a powerful role in Mr. Miele's, Mr. Wilson's and Ms. Gora's struggles to recover.
Class informed everything from the circumstances of their heart attacks to the emergency care each received, the households they returned to and the jobs they hoped to resume. It shaped their understanding of their illness, the support they got from their families, their relationships with their doctors. It helped define their ability to change their lives and shaped their odds of getting better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/national/class/HEALTH-FINAL.html?ex=1273896000&en=8359d268f2ff6171&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss