Did you know that lying about your heart symptoms could save your life?
It’s called the “Yentle syndrome” [1] and it was coined in 1991 by then-NIH Director Dr. Bernadine Healy. It describes how women had to misrepresent their symptoms to get the same life-saving heart treatment as men.
Turns out that the syndrome still exists. Men’s heart health is improving, but women in the U.S. are dying from heart disease at an alarming rate. In fact, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women, killing more women each year than all of the cancers combined.
And the reasons are gender-based: misinformation, misdiagnosis, and mistreatment. A 2014 survey [2] shows that an alarming 45 percent of women ages 25-60 don’t know heart disease is their number one killer. Some doctors are unversed with the different symptoms women experience, such as the nausea, backache, jaw pain, extreme fatigue or shortness of breath that are women’s signs of heart attack, rather than the crushing chest pain that men first experience. Treatment options are based on medical research conducted on men; only 24 percent of participants in all heart-related studies are women.
I had the pleasure this week to attend a dinner hosted by the heart of Washington, Esther Coopersmith, to honor Barbra Streisand and celebrate the Women’s Health Alliance, which Streisand co-founded. She spoke passionately about the Alliance’s awareness campaign, “Fight the lady Killer” [3].
Read the full blog post [4] on Huffington Post.
Download Checklist [5] and help spread the word #GetHeartChecked
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