Changes in lifestyle can reduce your risk of heart disease

Nearly half of American women know that heart disease kills more women than any other condition. More disturbing, one in three physicians surveyed in a Gallup Poll were unaware of this statistic. Most women have a greater fear of breast cancer, yet heart disease kills 10 times more women than breast cancer every year, according to the American Heart Association.

The hopeful news is that many of the most threatening risk factors for heart disease are things we can do something about. It's just the opposite for breast cancer: Changing our diet or environment can only modestly reduce our risk of breast cancer. In contrast, modifications we make, even small ones, every day, can dramatically reduce women's risk of contracting, and dying from, cardiovascular disease.

Before you can begin to lower your risk, you need to know what your individual risk is. That risk "number" is calculated based on your age, and whether you smoke, have high blood pressure or diabetes, are overweight or have high cholesterol levels. Except for your age, you can do something positive about just about every risk factor for heart disease.

Most women are more worried about the men in their life suffering a heart attack and believe cardiovascular disease to be a "man's disease," even though more women than men die of it every year. Women are more likely than men to die if they do have a heart attack; they receive medical treatment less quickly, and medical diagnostic tests less often. Even when a heart attack is correctly diagnosed in women, they do not receive acute treatments - such as clot-busting drugs or bypass surgery - as often as men.

Just when we thought estrogen was protective against heart disease, the data from the Women's Health Initiative has shown that combination (estrogen and progestin) postmenopausal hormone therapy is not only not beneficial, but may actually be harmful to women by increasing their risk of heart attack, stroke or blood clots.