Love your heart

More than twice as many women die of heart disease than of breast cancer. Shocked? We were, too, but don’t panic – by making simple lifestyle changes you can help halve your risk

How to keep your ticker ticking for longer

There’s still a widespread belief that heart problems are a man’s disease. And although men do have more heart attacks, when women have one they die at higher rates than men, and in women under 50 this difference is particularly bad.

The reason? Women often just don’t recognise that they’re having a heart attack because the symptoms may be much more vague, and only around half experience the dramatic Casualty-style crushing chest pain. Even when women think something is wrong, they often don’t call an ambulance because they don’t want to make a fuss or be embarrassed if it’s not serious. This means that vital diagnosis time can be wasted, and the longer an attack is left undiagnosed and untreated, the more the heart can be damaged. Even when we do make it to hospital, the symptoms aren’t always recognised. A study published earlier this year found that women were less likely than men to receive the recommended treatments.

‘A third of women who present to hospitals with some sort of heart-related symptom initially have a different diagnosis,’ says Dr Nikki Stamp, one of the few female heart and lung surgeons, whose new book, Can You Die Of A Broken Heart?

(Murdoch Books) explains what women really need to know about the inner workings of the heart, but generally don’t.

‘Women experience heart attacks differently, but most of the research has been done on men, by men,’ says Dr Stamp, who describes the fact that heart disease is the leading cause of death in women as, ‘One of the biggest untold stories of women’s health.’

HOW DO PROBLEMS START?

The most common cause of both heart attacks and strokes is a build up of fatty material in the lining of the arteries, a process called atherosclerosis, which stops enough blood from reaching either the heart or the brain. This is more common over the age of 65, or if you have a family history of heart or circulatory disease – but we can all cut our risks, and what’s good for the heart, is good for the brain, too.