Pound Cake With Betty Crocker Chocolate Cake Mix

How does the woman's heart "

of Dr. Francesca Cionini - OU Medical Director of Hospital CardiologiaAzienda C.'' Poma Mantova''

For many decades it was believed that cardiovascular disease and myocardial infarction in particular could affect not only the male and female. In fact, numerous studies have now shown that in fact heart disease is a killer''dangerous''for women, because the number of women affected infarction and / or angina pectoris was significantly higher than, for example, to women affected by breast cancer.

This phenomenon is also likely to increase in relation to the increase in life expectancy in women. In fact, coronary heart disease affects women with a delay of about 10 years than men and this is thanks to the famous''umbrella''hormone estrogen. In fact, estrogen hormones that are produced by the female body during the fertile age have a protective effect on the vessel wall on metabolism and thereby delaying the onset of atherosclerosis and therefore cardiovascular disease. With menopause the production of these hormones is drastically reduced and this should be added that very often women change their way of life, perhaps because she retires, and becomes more sedentary and less control diet and for this reason that women start to be affected by heart disease as men. To all this must be added that in recent decades the status of women has changed considerably: the woman works and often has professional responsibilities with peaks of high stress, and also when he returns home to become a housewife, and then of course take care of home, husband and children without being able to take time to relax and run a regular daily aerobic exercise. In addition, this style life''accelerated''involves having to run shorter and shorter meals and unfair with excessive consumption of fats, carbohydrates, excess of which contribute to overweight, glucose intolerance, diabetes and hypertension. Finally the woman also in recent decades has also treated the man in the habit smoking. Often women who smoke begin smoking early and often much more than men with dramatic effects not only with regard to cardiovascular disease but also cancer.
When a coronary artery disease affects the woman or man the characteristics of symptoms, diagnostic procedures, treatment and prognosis are totally different.
Symptoms: everyone now knows that heart attack is characterized by pain in the center of oppressive chest that radiates to the upper left corner. Often the symptoms reported by women but are nonspecific. They report general malaise, a lump in my throat, reported anxiety, palpitations, and this may delay or even underestimate the diagnosis of heart failure.

also used diagnostic tests for detection of coronary artery disease, such as stress testing or myocardial scintigraphy, are less sensitive in women and may also not be able to tell if a woman has or does not have coronary artery disease. And 'because of the difficulty in arriving at a diagnosis of coronary artery disease in women, even when are hospitalized, are brought before a delay in treatment and interventional procedures (angiography, angioplasty) life-saving than men.

Not only that, but the prognosis of women - both during the course both in the hospital post-admission - is substantially worse because age is usually more advanced, are often present concomitant diseases that limit therapy (renal failure, diabetes etc. ..), the timing of hospitalization longer (we know how to save heart muscle must intervene as soon as possible: Time is muscle!)

It should be noted, moreover, an important difference between men and women: women often with coronary artery disease have more evidence of coronary heart disease of small arms (microcirculation) and vasospasm on which you can not run any type angioplasty intervention, but medical therapy with a significant disadvantage in terms of relapses.
In conclusion we must not think that we women are less fortunate! We just think you are different from men and this we know it every day. In particular we need to be more sensitive to the signals our body sends us not underestimate them. We must try to eliminate all risk factors that may worsen our future life and implement a regular lifestyle. Then:
-stop smoking-healthy diet

-activity daily aerobic exercise (and international guidelines say to do a walk at a rapid pace of at least 40 minutes a day for at least 5 days out of 7)
-monitoring of blood pressure and lipid profile. If you experience high blood pressure or high cholesterol, rivogersi your doctor to set up a diet and / or appropriate treatment. I also remember that both the low-fat diet and salt restriction that physical activity helps would reduce blood pressure and cholesterol.
The heart of women is great ... but fragile. Not destroy it.

See you on Saturday 29 at 11 at the Loggia del Grano.