Heart Disease Can Strike At Any Age

Online, March 13, 2011 (Newswire.com) - No matter what age you are, you should know your numbers ... blood pressure and cholesterol.

This story of Megan,a 23 year-old woman unaware that she was suffering from high cholesterol, illustrates why everyone needs to understand whether they're at risk of heart attack, irrespective of how old they are.

Megan's story had a happy ending ... yours may not, so get checked out today!

This is Megan's story -

Not many 23-year-olds can say they're heart attack survivors.

But Megan Johns wants to help women of all ages improve their odds of surviving heart disease.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women; one in four women die of heart disease. About 515,000 women have a heart attack every year.

Johns of Hyde Park was just 21 and getting ready to graduate from the University of Dayton when the symptoms started.

"I had a pressure in my chest. It felt like a stack of books resting on my chest," she said.

Her left arm felt heavy and tingly, but she wasn't sweating, and she wasn't in pain.

"I was just feeling weird," Johns said.

For the next 12 hours, she continued with her plans - meeting and greeting friends and family who'd come to see her graduate.

"I even drove my car," she said. "I was even complaining about how I felt. I was telling everyone around me how I felt, and everyone said, 'You're probably just anxious or having indigestion or something.' "

She took a nap, hoping she'd feel better, but that didn't help.

Johns was due to travel after graduation - a trip to Florida and another longer, trip to Europe were in the works.

Her mother suggested she get checked out before she hit the road. They headed to the nearest emergency room.

"My blood pressure was really high, which was surprising. That's not normal at all," she said.

She was admitted right away and doctors started running tests.

"All of a sudden a doctor and nurse appeared in my room. They were firing questions at me, and hooking me up to an EKG," Johns said. "And then the doctor said, 'Long story short, you're not going to graduation tomorrow.' "

A blood test found a certain protein was elevated, indicating heart muscle had died.

"You've had a heart attack," the doctor told her.

More tests revealed that Johns has a genetic condition that causes her to have very high cholesterol levels, even though she's vegan - she doesn't eat meat or dairy products, both of which can contribute to unhealthy cholesterol levels.

Johns is healthy now. She exercises regularly and takes medication to keep her cholesterol at healthy levels. She takes an aspirin a day to prevent blood clots.

But her experience taught her two important lessons, and she shares those as a volunteer for the American Heart Association's "Go Red for Women"campaign, which aims to raise awareness of heart disease in women.

The first: Know your risks, she said.

"I didn't know I had high cholesterol or a genetic predisposition for it," she said. "If I had known, I would have been able to take care of myself."

After Johns had her heart attack, her entire family underwent genetic testing. Her mother has the same condition, and now she's getting treatment.

"The second thing is to listen to your body," Johns said. "I wasn't listening to my body, and it was clearly telling me something was wrong.''

Her symptoms were classic, but like too many women, she waited to get help.

"I'm really lucky the damage wasn't worse," she said.

In 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, women made up 52.1 percent of all cardiovascular disease deaths.

Women and men are equally at risk for heart attack, but women, especially after menopause, tend to die sooner than men after a heart attack. About 23 percent of women 40 and older die within a year after a heart attack, compared with about 18 percent of men.

There are several reasons for that, said JoAnna English, a cardiologist at Christ Hospital:

Women have smaller arteries, which makes surgical interventions like angioplasty and bypass surgery more complicated.

Women are more likely to have diabetes, which means their blood vessels are more damaged, and that damage is more spread out.

Women tend to have heart attacks later in life than men do - often they're in their 60s or 70s - so they're older and sicker when the heart attack occurs, making recovery more difficult. A woman's risk of having a heart attack, and dying from it, increases sharply after menopause.

Those complications make preventing heart disease even more important for women, English said.

That means exercising, following a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight.

Also, women need to know their numbers - their blood pressure, their cholesterol and their glucose levels - so they know what their risk factors are for a heart attack.

"You can't reverse a heart attack," English said. "It's important to change those lifestyle factors early."

You can view the original article at http://communitypress.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20110210/LIFE07/102100306/0/NEWS05/Heart-attack-any-age?odyssey=nav|head

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