Health: National Wear Red Day Raises Awareness About Women And Heart Disease
By Stephanie Stahl
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Friday February 6th is National Wear Red Day to raise awareness about women and heart disease, which affects 43 million American women. February is heart month. Heart disease is the leading killer of women. Doctors say it can happen to anyone, even young, seemingly healthy women.
Stephanie Austin is all about red, having survived a heart attack when she was just 35 years old. Stephanie says, "It was tremendously scary because I went from the best shape of my life to the worst shape of my life overnight." Stephanie, who's 41 now, is a main line mom of four and was always actively involved with a variety of sports. She was asleep when she had the heart attack. Fatefully, her husband, who's a doctor, got a call. She says, "I was dying in my sleep. The phone call woke him so he was there to hear me take what would have been my last breath."
CPR saved her life. Then, she was diagnosed with arrhythmia and now has a pacemaker and defibrillator. It turns out she had a family history of heart disease she never knew about, a young aunt who died. "All my mother knew was that she had died of a broken heart," Stephanie says.
Now, she's on a mission to educate women about heart disease to know the warning signs that can be subtle. "Women in particular don't realize that heart disease is the number one killer of all women. They don't know that it's going to kill one in three women and they don't appreciate how empowered we can be. We don't have to just sit back and accept this," Stephanie says.
The Go Red for Women campaign encourages women to know their numbers - cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose keeping them under control along with a healthy diet and exercise, can reduce, even prevent heart disease.
