Program will stress heart health for women

The Journal staff

West Bend When it comes to matters of the heart, Barb Argabright has a warning for women: You're in more danger than you thought.

"Women aren't as protected from heart disease, heart attacks and stroke as much as we used to think," said Argabright, the health promotions coordinator at St. Joseph's Hospital here.

Heart disease used to be considered an almost exclusively male affliction. Women who showed symptoms often were diagnosed with something else.

In recent years, as the medical community has begun to pay more attention to women's health issues in general, heart disease has been identified as a major problem for women.

Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in women, according to the American Heart Association. The association says that about 230,000 women under the age of 65 die from heart attacks each year. About 27%, or 62,100, of those women are 55 or younger.

During 1993 in Wisconsin, 19,270 people died from heart disease, more than from all kinds of cancer combined. About 38%, or 7,352, of those were women.

"Women can't just sit back and say, `This is a man's problem.' They do have to think about this," Argabright added. Wellness Program

To encourage those thoughts, St. Joseph's and the General Clinic are planning a heart wellness program for women of all ages. The event will be from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Cedar Theatre in the Cedar Lake Health Center, 5595 Highway Z. The cost is $5 per person.

Cardiologists Francis Wolf and Leon Rosen will be the featured speakers. They will discuss heart disease in general as well as how it specifically affects women.

Also on hand will be staff members from the hospital and clinic. They will take blood pressure readings, discuss St. Joseph's cardiac rehabilitation program and answer questions about diet, exercise and lifestyle.

This is the first time the clinic and hospital, which both are part of the Aurora Health Care network, have held a joint program. Post-menopausal Risk

Maggie Seideman, coordinator of the hospital's cardiopulmonary rehabilitation program, said the rate of heart disease in women increases dramatically after menopause. Before that time, the presence of the hormone estrogen seems to inhibit the development of the disease.

After menopause, with estrogen no longer being produced by the body, that natural protection is gone. Ten years after reaching menopause, a woman runs the same risk of developing heart disease as a man her age.

Seideman said studies showed that women with less than eight years of education are four times as likely to develop heart disease as those who have more education. Women who smoke and take birth control pills are 39 times more likely to develop heart disease than other women their age who do not.

Other risk factors are smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a family history of heart disease.

Despite a push in recent years to educate women about the risks of heart disease, many still ignore the symptoms.

"Women tend to say it's a man's disease," Seideman said. "Therefore, they have more severe heart disease by the time they are treated."

This could explain why women recover slower and have more complications after heart surgery, she added.

For more information about the heart wellness program, call the General Clinic at 338-7107 or St. Joseph's Hospital at 334-8237.

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