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Heart Matters A new online DIY heart-health checkup spells better long-term health for women. 
Using a new online tool, women across the country can now track their “heart-a-scope” or heart disease risk over the next 10 years. Developed by the American Heart Association (AHA), the easy-to-navigate tool helps women put their heart disease risk into context and identifies lifestyle issues that could potentially put them at risk for heart disease. The new tool also can help provide a backdrop for a conversation with your doctor about heart disease and encourage you to know your own personal risks. These include family history, lifestyle risks such as being overweight or smoking cigarettes, or other signs of heart disease, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Although awareness for heart disease risk is on the rise, 1 out of 5 doctors do not diagnose heart disease among women. At the same time, consumer surveys have found that women are less concerned about their individual heart health but are more concerned about their friends’ and family’s heart health. “A recent study showed that one-third of women underestimate their personal risk of heart disease, and a majority don’t know what cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels are healthy for them,” said Nieca Goldberg, M.D., chief of Women’s Cardiac Care at Lenox Hill Hospital and assistant clinical professor at The New York University School of Medicine. “We created the Go Red Heart Checkup to motivate women to take action and to encourage them to open a dialogue with their doctors about their long-term heart health.” Nearly 30,000 people logged onto the “Go Red Heart Checkup” tool within the first month that it was launched on the Internet (http://www.goredforwomen.org/heartcheckup/index.html). By entering key health numbers (including weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels) and information about your lifestyle (such as how frequently you exercise and whether you smoke), you can receive a report that reveals your risk of having a heart attack or suffering from heart disease in the next 10 years. The Go Red Heart Checkup report also identifies the risk factors you can change and provides a personalized action plan you can print out and discuss with your doctor. That action plan may include suggestions such as losing weight, reducing stress, stopping smoking or managing your blood pressure. After answering a series of questions, you are able to print out your own personal heart-o-scope profile and take this to your next doctor's appointment to address any concerns you may have. The online tool also is available in hard copy (call the AHA at 1-88-MY-HEART) if you prefer that format. If you do not already know your pertinent numbers, such as blood pressure, cholesterol count and fasting glucose, you can simply download the Blood Test Approval form found on the Web site and take or fax it to your doctor to order a blood test. Once the blood test determines your numbers, you can enter them into the tool and get your personalized heart-health check. The AHA has long urged women to know their health numbers: “good” (high-density lipoprotein, or HDL) and “bad” (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL) cholesterol counts, blood pressure, fasting glucose, body mass index, waist circumference and minutes of physical activity performed each day. Now, you can determine for yourself whether your numbers add up to a high risk of heart disease or stroke, and then decide what to do about it. The Go Red Heart Checkup gives you a firsthand, personalized way to learn your risks and get useful recommendations for taking the first steps toward a heart-healthy lifestyle. Both user-friendly and comprehensive, the Go Red Heart Checkup takes all major risk factors for heart disease into consideration, including diabetes and metabolic syndrome. For example, diabetes makes a woman two to four times likelier to die from heart disease than a woman without this condition. Metabolic syndrome is defined as someone having any three of the following five diagnostic measures, each of them an indication of increased heart disease risk: elevated waist circumference, triglycerides, blood pressure and fasting glucose, and reduced HDL cholesterol. The risk of heart disease increases substantially over your lifetime if you do not control or manage your risk factors. The more risk factors you have, the greater your chances of developing heart disease and having a heart attack or stroke. The new tool can help you identify, then work on, risk factors, even if you have only one or two. |
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