Heart Health For Women - Some Healthy Heart Facts

According to the American Heart Association, "of the 13 million people who have had a history of coronary heart disease, more than half are women." While this is a startling statistic, new evidence has emerged indicating that symptoms in women are more atypical than in men. In line with this assessment, the National Institutes of Health reveal that women are more at risk for having heart attacks than men.

Some risk factors are common among both men and women. They include smoking, high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes. A key difference is that the warning signs in women can be quite different from the standard signs typically found in their male counterparts.

Although the symptoms for both men and women experiencing a heart attack can be the same, including shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, and nausea, women describe a burning sensation which may be interpreted as heartburn rather than chest pain, which is the most common symptom in men.

It has recently been reported that stomach pain, along with the aforementioned symptoms, can be another sign associated with heart attacks in women but because it is atypical it is not diagnosed nor recognized as a heart attack. Moreover, "the heart and coronary arteries of women are smaller than men" which also accounts for problems in diagnosing heart disease in women.

While women are approximately ten years older than men when they have their first heart attack, their rate of recovery is tenuous due to an increasing number of health problems which hinders the recovery time as well.

Heart Disease is the number one killer of men and women in the world today. It is recommended that women seek immediate treatment for any symptoms that could possibly be heart-related.