Alert: 61% Urban Women Are at a Risk of Heart Diseases

Heart attacks are deadlier for women as they rarely experience chest pain and often mistake symptoms for the flu

39 year old Radhika Goel did everything right. Her fitness levels were textbook perfect. She ran three kilometers a day, dutifully ate her porridge and fruit and never smoked. Her blood pressure was normal. She assumed she lucked out on the gene pool; her grandmother passed away at 98, without a chronic disease.

In 2013, at the age of 37, Radhika had a Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD), a tear in the artery wall which caused a major heart attack. She’s fortunate to have survived. SCAD is a deadly condition and in 70% cases it is identified only post-mortem in autopsies.

Radhika is on five maintenance medicines a day and may eventually need more.

Two summers back, when I got that pain, I couldn’t have thought ‘heart’. The pain was so quick and I heard it crackle in my ears like thunder. For a moment, I thought something had fallen on my back! I struggled to catch my breath and clung to the kitchen sink waiting for the pain to subside. My shoulders were on fire, my triceps felt like they were being ripped from my arms.

- Radhika Goel, Heart Patient

Surprise number 1: The biggest killer of women globally, is not cancer, as many believe. It is heart disease. Heart attacks are killing more women than all kinds of cancer combined.

Fat India: Who Is At Risk?

More than 60% of urban Indian women in the age group of 30-45 years are at risk of developing heart diseases, with 89% of risk-prone women falling in the overweight/obese category. This is according to a pan-India study on ten metros and two-tier cities done by Saffolalife.

Cardiovascular diseases in women are slowly gaining epidemic proportions because of changing food habits and unhealthy food choices, such as increased intake of cheese and trans-fats laden dinners. All this leads to increased abdominal obesity, a major risk factor for heart diseases.

- Dr Kunal Sarkarm Cardiac Surgeon, Medica Super-specialty Hospital

The Woman’s Heart Attack

Surprise number 2: Radhika learnt that women’s heart attacks are different from the classic Hollywood mind-numbing chest pains. It’s more like nauseating, arm-twisting pain accompanied by fatigue or insomnia.

And that’s where the problem lies. The symptoms of heart attack are so varied and nuanced, that even doctors often fail to take a woman’s risk seriously and treat it aggressively.

And that’s a terrifying fact. But why should such differences be?

Answer: Nobody knows for sure.

But there are theories. Many. It may be because a woman’s arteries are narrower than a man’s, or because her microvascular system functions less efficiently, or because her heart beats faster (verging, this, on metaphor), or because it takes longer to relax between beats, or...

Bottomline: the reason for no coherent theory is that until the year 2001, there was minimal or no research on women’s heart attacks.

Research was done on only male subjects and it was assumed there would be no gender bias.

According to the American Heart Association’s own admission, men with abnormal test results were treated far more aggressively than women with the same results. Women reporting the same symptoms as men were at least twice as likely to receive, (no surprises!), a psychiatric diagnosis.

What we now know is that 6 out of 10 women are at a risk of heart diseases. Look around, your sister, mother, friends; one of them could report symptoms like a shooting neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain with excessive fatigue.

The trouble is, how do you know a cigar is just a cigar? As in, back pain is endemic to the office going race, just when does it become a possible warning sign?

Doctor Narain of Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai sums it up:

Don’t be reporting every little kvetch. But if a symptom is unlike any you have experienced before, rush to the hospital. Get a reality check.

- Dr Narain, COO, Kokilaben Hospital

As for Radhika’s heart condition, SCAD, there’s not enough research to say why it happened or it will ever happen again or whether her heart is as good as new. In the last two years, she’s seen her third newborn crack his first smile, take his first steps and chatter away to glory. She plans to walk him to the first day of his school and toss his graduation cap in the air.

She is living her second innings as a healthy, young, active heart survivor.