Ingles

3 Common Heart Problems and How to Solve Them

For weeks, Gail Alexander-Wright, then 37, had noticed a dull pain in her neck, as well as a nagging fatigue. Then, one night, she felt a sharp pain in her chest. "I had just worked out, so I thought I'd pulled a muscle," says the business analyst, now 42, from Chesapeake, Virginia. But an hour later, she was lying on her bed, drenched in sweat and so overcome with pain she couldn't speak. When the paramedics came, even they didn't recognize what was wrong: She was having a heart attack. "I was young, thin, and didn't have any other symptoms," she says.
Turns out, Alexander-Wright's neck pain and exhaustion had been early warning signs of a heart attack (in which blood flow to a section of heart muscle is blocked, causing damage there). Though Alexander-Wright did feel chest tightness before her attack, less than a third of women do, which is one reason why twice as many women die of heart attacks as men. "Heart attack is not just a man's deal," says Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Heart disease—a name for the dangerous buildup of plaque in your arteries that could lead to an attack or stroke—"is the number-one killer of women," she adds.

One problem: Many women are walking around with high cholesterol or blood pressure without even realizing it, which puts them at higher risk. The reassuring news is the more you know about the care and feeding of this vital organ, the stronger and healthier yours will be.

Problem No. 1: Hypertension
The lowdown. About half of women over 45 have hypertension (a.k.a. high blood pressure), says Nieca Goldberg, MD, medical director of NYU Langone Medical Center's Women's Heart Program.

Why that's a problem: Over time, elevated blood pressure can make your arteries less flexible, so it's more difficult for blood to flow through them. It can also damage blood vessels, possibly leading to kidney failure or blindness, or