Sister to Sister

Dr. Hodis recalls if taking a baby aspirin each day can prevent heart attacks in women.

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Dr. Hodis:
If you are women without previous heart attack or stroke the most current data is pretty strong in indicating that aspirin is not going to protect your heart for a future heart attack. The data is pretty strong in that regard. Now, as you add on risk factors, such as high cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure, there may be some protection. We need to see more data, but in general that is what physicians would tend to use aspirin for the more high-risk individual, high-risk women.

If you have had a previous heart attack then most likely you should be on a low dose of aspirin, but we need to be very cautious because we need more data about aspirin in protecting the heart, especially in women who do not have a previous heart attack.

About Dr. Hodis, M.D.:
Dr. Howard N. Hodis is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit and has a Harry Bauer & Dorothy Bauer Rawlins Professorship in Cardiology. Graduating with a medical doctorate from USC School of Medicine, he is now a member of the American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis, American College of Physicians, the American Federation for Clinical Research and Society for Preventive Cardiology. His clinical interests are in atherosclerosis, cardiology-lipid disorders and prevention, ultrasound measurement of atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease.

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Visit Dr. Hodis at the University of Southern California

Dr. Hodis explains if it is correct that low-income women are more likely to die from heart disease than affluent women.

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Dr. Hodis:
Well, socioeconomic status plays a large role in men and women in terms of their presentation, the amount of risk factors they have and in their outcome and to the level of degree that they receive care for their risk factors as well as for their outcome. So in general, the answer to that question would be yes.

About Dr. Hodis, M.D.:
Dr. Howard N. Hodis is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit and has a Harry Bauer & Dorothy Bauer Rawlins Professorship in Cardiology. Graduating with a medical doctorate from USC School of Medicine, he is now a member of the American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis, American College of Physicians, the American Federation for Clinical Research and Society for Preventive Cardiology. His clinical interests are in atherosclerosis, cardiology-lipid disorders and prevention, ultrasound measurement of atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease.

View Dr. Hodis Videos:
http://www.empowher.com/users/dr-howard-hodis

Visit Dr. Hodis at the University of Southern California

Dr. Hodis describes if women and men present with identical heart disease symptoms.

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Dr. Hodis:
Heart disease symptoms tend differ between men and women. The typical picture we see in men is the crushing chest pain, the sweating, they get sick to their stomach, have nausea, they may through up, pain radiates down the left arm.

In women, it could be quite different. They may just sweat. They may just have some abdominal pain like stomach ache. They may just have a little hand pain, a little jaw pain, so it is not the classic symptoms or presentation that we see in men. So it could be quite sudden in women and unless a physician is aware of these differences, he or she could miss it and a woman herself could miss it. She might think that the stomach pain is just from bad food, when in fact she could have had, or is having a heart attack.

About Dr. Hodis, M.D.:
Dr. Howard N. Hodis is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit and has a Harry Bauer & Dorothy Bauer Rawlins Professorship in Cardiology. Graduating with a medical doctorate from USC School of Medicine, he is now a member of the American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis, American College of Physicians, the American Federation for Clinical Research and Society for Preventive Cardiology. His clinical interests are in atherosclerosis, cardiology-lipid disorders and prevention, ultrasound measurement of atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease.

View Dr. Hodis Videos:
http://www.empowher.com/users/dr-howard-hodis

Visit Dr. Hodis at the University of Southern California

Dr. Barnard describes the common cardiovascular (heart disease) risk factors found in women.

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About Dr. Barnard, M.D.:
Dr. Denise Dayle Barnard established the Women's Cardiovascular Health Program in La Jolla, deriving from her passion for educating women on their greatest health threat. She is one of two cardiologists active in the UCSD Advanced Heart Failure Treatment Program. She is nationally recognized as a Heart Failure expert and is actively involved in clinical research trials. She lectures to physicians, students and the general public on topics including Women's Cardiovascular Health, Heart Failure awareness, treatment and prevention, as well as Complementary and Alternative Medicine practices in Cardiology.

Visit Dr. Barnard at UC San Diego Medical Center

Lori describes how she functioned at home after open-heart surgery.

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Kathy describes the pressure she felt in her chest directly before her heart attack.

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Kathy:
It started like a squeezing feeling, like a, like a little push. Someone was pushing, and no matter which way I turned or tried to lay down it just got progressively worse and just felt like more and more pushing into my chest area.

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Kathy recalls if she noticed a problem was arising before her heart attack.

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Kathy:
Yes, I did, I had, the signs that I had were that I was very, very tired for someone my age. I had felt some tightness in my chest, but I thought it was just working too hard. I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was having trouble walking. The circulation in my legs wasn’t what it should have been.

There were little signs that I should have recognized, and when I went home I was having my heart attack that one evening when I went home and I started to feel this pressure and all at once I thought, “Oh my gosh, I am having a heart attack,” and my husband says, “Lay down and go to sleep. You will be fine. You’re just tired,” and I said, “No, get an aspirin, call 911. We’re going to the hospital now.”

And I had to convince him that I was having a heart attack; women don’t have heart attacks. And it was, I got to the hospital and they said I got there so fast that there was no damage to my heart, and that’s the key is get there, get the help, and get it taken care of. Don’t believe that "it doesn’t happen to women" because it does.

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FRIDAY, Nov. 6 (HealthDay News) -- If an inept or abrasive boss is ruining your workday, you may be taking that stress to heart, literally.

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HealthDay - THURSDAY, Nov. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Elevated blood levels of phosphorus are associated with a higher risk of heart disease, U.S. researchers say.

THURSDAY, Nov. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Elevated blood levels of phosphorus are associated with a higher risk of heart disease, U.S. researchers say.

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Dr. Shokooh shares if a woman's risk for heart disease increases once a family member is diagnosed.

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About Dr. Shokooh, M.D.:
Dr. Shalizeh Shokooh is Director at the Women's Heart Center at the Orange County Heart Institute and Co-Director of the Women Heart Center at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange County, California. Dr. Shokooh graduated medical school and finished her residency at UC Irvine. She also conducted a cardiology fellowship at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. She is a member of the American College of Cardiology and Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology. Dr. Shokooh can treat patients in English, Spanish, and Farsi.

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Visit Dr. Shokooh at the Orange County Heart Institute

Dr. Goldberg shares what medical professionals have learned in the last five years about women and heart attacks.

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Dr. Goldberg:
We’ve learned lots in the last five years about women and their heart attacks. For instance, believe it or not, women who are under 50 who have their first heart attacks, they’re twice as likely to die of their first heart attack compared to men. And, when there had been anatomic studies, autopsy studies, one that looked at the arteries of young men and women like in their late teens and early 20s who had died in car accidents, and we found out the earliest build-up of plaque, the building block of a heart attack is cholesterol, the gunky stuff that builds up in the walls of your artery, start when we’re pretty young, and it really does relate to smoking and a high-fat diet and obesity.

So we have that information, all the more reason to think about, as early as you can, prevention. So as a women’s health project, we know that heart disease is not only about preventing a heart attack in that woman, but also in her family, and since the women take care of their families, it’s the perfect place to start.

The other thing we’ve learned that the gold standard test, the coronary angiogram that I mentioned that my patient had before, she was lucky. She had an obvious blocked artery. In some women they have symptoms and have pressure in their chest on exertion or shortness of breath on exertion that goes away with rest, and those are symptoms we call angina, chest pressure due to a blocked artery.

Well, sometimes these women have these symptoms and even have abnormal stress tests, but when they go for coronary angiography, the study where the doctor puts a small catheter up the artery in your groin to the heart and then injects x-ray dyes so that we can opacify the arteries, that you don’t see a clear-cut blocked artery.

The women have symptoms but they don’t have a blocked artery that could be opened up with a balloon, a stent placed, or even bypass to be done on. So does that mean they don’t have heart disease? No, they do have heart disease, but sometimes their plaque is so evenly distributed in the arteries that you don’t see this crimping of the artery that’s more common either in men, or in women after menopause.

So we don’t see this even build-up of plaque, and so it doesn’t look like it’s blocked. So the women were being told they don’t have any problems, yet in 30% of those women have heart attacks, 30% of those cases women have heart attacks.

So we have to be more vigilant about connecting the symptoms women have and the behavior of the symptoms.

About Dr. Goldberg, M.D.:
Dr. Nieca Goldberg is a cardiologist and a nationally recognized pioneer in women’s heart health. Her New York City practice Total Heart Care focuses primarily on caring for women. Dr. Goldberg is Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of NYU Women’s Heart Program, the Co-Medical Director of the 92nd Street Y’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Center, a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s “Go Red” campaign – an association for which she has volunteered for over 15 years and been a board member in NYC. She was formerly the Chief of Women’s Cardiac Care at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

A graduate of Barnard College and SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, she completed her medical residency at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center and a cardiology fellowship at SUNY Downstate.

Dr. Goldberg’s research and medical publications focus on cardiovascular disease in women, exercise imaging and exercise. She is often asked by the media for her expert interpretation of current studies and medical news.

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Stroke victims who are taken directly to a trained stroke center are more likely to receive the necessary clot-busting drugs--and receive them more quickly--than those taken to a regular hospital, research suggests.

New research suggests that a diet high in fructose, a major ingredient in sugary sodas and other sweetened foods, raises the risk of developing high blood pressure.

According to new research, people who have a parent with Alzheimer's disease have a higher risk of developing high blood pressure, arterial disease, and markers of inflammation than people who do not have a parent with the condition.

New research published in the journal Anesthesiology suggests that illness and surgery don't contribute to long-term cognitive decline in seniors, nor do they accelerate the development of dementia.

Heart patients who have their coronary bypass surgery "off-pump," or without being placed a heart-lung machine, have poorer long-term outcomes, a new study suggests.

In the A Woman’s Heart series, we’ve been focusing on heart disease, identifying and recognizing risk factors as well as what we can to do to beat the odds and not become one of the heart disease statistics. This series has been exciting to me (and I hope to all my sisters out there as well) because I’ve been taking a long, hard look at my own life and am making changes. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing!”

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In the A Woman’s Heart series, we’ve been focusing on heart disease, identifying and recognizing risk factors as well as what we can to do to beat the odds and not become one of the heart disease statistics. This series has been exciting to me (and I hope to all my sisters out there as well) because I’ve been taking a long, hard look at my own life and am making changes. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing!”

read more

Middle aged children of Alzheimer's sufferers have a high risk of hypertension and other inflammatory conditions--a fact that experts say puts them at risk of dementia as well.