Saving Women’s Hearts

What were the best-spent ad dollars in this year's Super Bowl? Hands-down in my book: Mark Sanchez’s PSA on women’s heart disease. After all, his presentation could literally save lives.

In a 20-second appearance, the New York Jets quarterback presented viewers with a little-known fact with serious implications: Symptoms of heart disease and heart attacks in women differ substantially from those in men.

Sure, we've all been taught to look for the “elephant on the chest”-type pain on the left side and down the left arm. But it turns out that those symptoms only tend to forecast a heart attack in about half the population –- that is, for men (and not all men, either). Symptoms of heart attacks and heart disease in women are far more diverse, including: pain in the neck, jaw, shoulder or back, abdominal discomfort, pain or “heartburn,” nausea or vomiting, sweating, dizziness or lightheadedness, unusual fatigue and shortness of breath.

Let’s lay aside for a moment the implication that women need man candy (in the form of an NFL quarterback) to pay attention to life-saving information. (“We thought that the sound of a handsome athlete's actual heart throbbing could help get the attention of female viewers” says the website. Thanks, CBS. Okay, so I have a hard time laying it aside.) But the message -- which medical professionals have known for upwards of a decade -- is an important one. Because heart disease often manifests differently in women, historically, the disease has been treated less aggressively in women -- and has often gotten misdiagnosed entirely.

Why is that the case? For one, most studies on heart disease have focused exclusively on men. Dr. Annabelle Volgman, who directs the Heart Center for Women at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, explains, “We were taught in the 1980s… that heart disease was a man’s disease.” But while men tend to contract heart disease earlier and exhibit more risk factors, as it turns out, since 1984, more women than men have actually died of cardiovascular diseases. Furthermore, clinical trials for many diseases have been conducted at the Veterans Affairs hospitals, yielding data from a largely male sample group. What's more, until fairly recently, clinical trials in women have mostly focused on gynecological issues, or breast cancer. So it's not surprising that the risk factors and diagnosis indicators we tend to recognize for heart disease don't similarly apply to women. (Fortunately, in 1993, the National Institutes of Health required that adequate numbers of women and minorities get included in any clinical study.)

The Go Red For Women campaign is on the forefront of a movement to raise awareness about women's heart disease, and wants to reduce coronary heart disease and stroke risk by 25 percent among women by the year's end. Knowing the symptoms of heart attacks in both men and women can save lives. Help them spread the word.

Photo Credit: Snarky_Momma