Red hot tips to keep your heart healthy

At age 15, Jill Maassel started having serious heart problems. Her heart raced 220 beats a minute for an hour or two at a time. This happened every day, sometimes twice a day, but her cardiologist insisted she would outgrow the condition. Jill was put on a high dose of the drug atenolol and told to wait.

“I would get sick often and not be able to go to school,” she said. “I couldn’t exercise. I would get dizzy and faint, so we went to get a second opinion. That cardiologist told me that I wasn’t going to grow out of this and that I needed surgery.”

On Jill’s 18th birthday, she had surgery for supraventricular tachycardia, an abnormal heart rhythm.

Heart disease may seem uncommon for women, but that’s a misconception, said Shaun Wiley, with the American Heart Association. As America’s No. 1 killer, it claims the lives of more than 460,000 women each year.

“For a long time, heart disease was viewed as an old man’s disease,” Wiley said. “It went underreported. We want women to be more aware of the issue."

The organization is raising awareness through its Go Red for Women movement in honor of American Heart Month. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the AHA asks women to take care of their hearts.

Chicago’s partner for the program is Abbott Laboratories, which is providing free oatmeal in its cafeterias, free health screenings and coaching for employees, said Sandra Burke, director of cardiovascular biology research.  However, it takes more than oatmeal to fight heart disease, and Burke encourages women to listen to their hearts.

“Women take care of everybody else: our children, husband, parents, everybody but ourselves,” said Burke. “We need to do a better job listening to our own bodies. Less than 20 percent of women know that heart disease is their leading health risk.”

One major reason women fail to recognize heart disease is that symptoms are much more subtle in women than men. Michelle Smietana, a software testing engineer at Abbott, suffered a heart attack last March. With a clean bill of health at age 33, she never expected heart problems.

“By taking myself to an emergency room, the doctor said, I saved my life,” Smietana said. “So many women would have ignored those pains and not recognized them as symptoms of a heart attack. Women experience very subtle symptoms such as shortness of breath, indigestion, or just a general sense of unease -- dizziness, the chills."

“Very often women are under-diagnosed," Burke said, "and don’t get the proper treatment. Women will come to the emergency room, on average, an hour later than men.”

The only way for women to change this trend is a change of attitude, said Maasel. She celebrates her 24th birthday today, six years after her surgery.

“This month means a lot to me,” Maassel said. “My birthday is in February, I had my surgery in February, and February is heart month. It’s ironic, but an important and special month. People say that must have been the worst birthday, but all I can say is that it was the best birthday present I ever got.”