Transcription:
Cardiovascular Disease Prevention

Amanda Wilde: Heart disease kills more women each year than all cancers combined, but you can lower your risks significantly. Today, we'll talk about cardiovascular health with cardiologist Dr. Manreet Basra. This is Hello Healthy, a Dignity Health Podcast. I'm Amanda Wilde. Dr. Basra, thank you for being here today.

Manreet Basra: Thank you so much for having me.

Amanda Wilde: What are the most common types of heart disease in women?

Manreet Basra: So, women do not have any different heart disease than the rest of the population, but it's just more under-recognized in women. So, we're looking at heart attacks, we're looking at stroke, we're looking at blockages in the arteries of the legs and any risk factors associated with it, which can cause these problems, which is high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. So, this is all present in the rest of the population as well, but just more under-recognized in women.

Amanda Wilde: Is that because symptoms of heart disease may be different for women than men?

Manreet Basra: The symptoms per se are not different. Women just have a habit of putting everything on the back burner because we try to put our families and our work ahead of us. So, it's not because they are made up different, just because we do things differently. So, the symptoms could include the chest pain, but it could just also include other non-specific stuff as well, which shouldn't be ignored.

Amanda Wilde: Are there early signs and symptoms of heart disease that we should be paying attention to?

Manreet Basra: So, any woman who has history of high blood pressure, diabetes, family history of heart disease, they should ensure that they are not having any chest discomfort, any shortness of breath with exertion, any dizziness, any feeling of their heartbeat fast in their chest; any loss of consciousness, which is unaccounted for. Those are the common symptoms to look out for, and they may not have chest pain, which is crushing, central in the chest, going to their jaw or down their left arm. Any non-specific chest pain which is associated with exertion is something to watch out for, especially in the presence of the risk factors that I just mentioned.

Amanda Wilde: So if we do feel some of these signs, what should we then do? Is it time to see the doctor? Do we get tested? What happens then?

Manreet Basra: Yes. First and foremost is not to ignore these symptoms. Yes, go and see your physician right away. Mention to them what you have been experiencing and get yourself checked out. Even if you do not have any symptoms and have the risk factors, you should still try to make sure that you do some sort of exertional activity every day to ensure the heart is in good condition.

Amanda Wilde: And are there some baseline tests we can get to monitor our heart condition?

Manreet Basra: There is no baseline test for checking your heart out. The baseline tests are for making sure that we are managing our risk factors, which include high blood pressure. Yes, we should make sure that we don't have high blood pressure by getting it screened at least on a once-a-year-physical. We should ensure that we do lab work once a year, which includes checking our kidneys, our hemoglobin, our liver function, and our cholesterol panel and now, more importantly, checking ourselves for pre-diabetes or diabetes. These are all blood work, which is a baseline per se, for making sure that we don't have risk factors that can add to developing heart disease in women. If we do have risk factors in the sense of smoking and inactivity, we should try to act on that. No smoking and at least moderate intensity exercise for 30 to 45 minutes at least five days a week would be recommended.

Amanda Wilde: Now, women generally develop coronary artery disease later than men. Why is that?

Manreet Basra: That has to do with the hormonal state of the women. So usually, the postmenopausal women are at more risk of developing heart disease that's because the physiology of a woman's body changes in the postmenopausal phase. But lately, due to the prevalence of obesity, risk factors such as smoking or, say, polycystic ovarian disease, that is already making lot of changes in a woman's body in premenopausal state as well. So, I would say that more and more evidence is coming where the premenopausal women should also pay equal attention. The data is coming out, which shows that they're equally, if not more, at risk than their postmenopausal cohorts.

Amanda Wilde: Now, many women say their physicians don't talk to them about coronary risk and sometimes mistake their symptoms for stress or even hypochondria. It seems like gender's coming into play there. Where else does gender come into play?

Manreet Basra: Most of the data and the studies that have been done in the past were usually on a male population of a particular race. But as more and more awareness is being created, there is more data and studies coming out, especially on female population of different races and ethnicities. And from that, we know that we should not ignore any symptoms that a woman comes in with.

As a physician, I think we are all aware that women are used to keeping everything on the back burner, like I said before. So, none of these symptoms in my mind should be put off as something like hypochondria. We should still get them an exercise treadmill test, which is a baseline physiological testing, which tells us about the functional capacity that a person has and if there is any associated changes in the person's symptoms while they're exercising.

So, there are certain non-invasive tests that can be provided to these patients, which are harmless, but provide a lot of information. So in my mind, in today's day and age, nothing should be taken lightly.

Amanda Wilde: We talked about higher risk post-menopause, that obesity and smoking and inactivity may contribute to heart disease. We mentioned going to the doctor for annual visits and getting some baseline numbers. What else can women do proactively to prevent heart disease?

Manreet Basra: Healthy diet. Making sure that they eat healthy and the rest of the family inculcates the habit of eating healthy as well. Bringing in more vegetables and fruits into everyday diet for themselves and the rest of the family would be very important in addition to the other things that we talked about. Making sure that there is no smoking and least amount of alcohol. And any other modifiable risk factors like weight, we should ensure that women are aware of normal BMIs for their age and height. Those are a couple of other things in addition to what we've talked about.

Amanda Wilde: So even though heart disease is the number one killer of women, this information really helps raise awareness. Dr. Basra, thank you for your into heart health and strategies we can use to minimize our risk for heart disease.

Manreet Basra: You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. And I hope all the women listening to me will go and get themselves checked for various risk factors. And if they're having any symptoms, they're not ignoring them.

Amanda Wilde: That was cardiologist, Dr. Manreet Basra. For more information, please visit www.dignityhealth.org/stockton/heart. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social media and check out our full podcast library for topics of interest to you. Thanks again for listening to Hello Healthy, a Dignity Health Podcast. I'm Amanda Wilde. Be well.