Taking It to Heart
AARP Bulletin
July/August 2007
Page 12-13
By: Barbara Basler

First lady Laura Bush is vibrant in a black pantsuit adorned with a tiny red enameled pin in the shape of a woman's dress, the symbol of the national Heart Truth education campaign. She's just blocks from the White House today, at George Washington University Hospital, explaining to a group of patients and doctors how she became involved with Heart Truth after medical experts presented her with some startling facts about women and heart disease. "I was surprised that heart disease was the number one killer" of women, Bush says. "I just didn't know. I assumed cancer was. And I knew if I didn't know, most women probably didn't know either."

The first lady has spent five years delivering the campaign's message that heart disease affects women as much as men, that a woman's heart attack symptoms can be very different from a man's and that women need to know if their family history or their lifestyle puts them at risk for heart disease.

During her hospital visit, Bush stopped to talk with a female heart patient and took part in a roundtable discussion with former heart patients and their doctors. Later, in an interview with the AARP Bulletin, Bush stressed the do's and don'ts of heart health - do lose weight, do eat healthy foods and exercise, don't smoke. Her soft Texas drawl and easygoing manner transformed what could be a finger-wagging lecture into something more like a conversation with a concerned friend.

Bush says that since turning 60, she's begun hearing about former school friends who have had heart attacks. "The first of the baby boomers think that we're perfectly healthy, but of course everyone needs to know what their risk factors are and treat them," she says. Once women turn 55, for example, age increases the odds for cardiac disease - so do high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, smoking, inactivity and a family history of heart disease.

Bush urges women to take control of their health. Heart disease, she says, is "particularly pervasive in women of color." Diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are more prevalent in African American and Hispanic women than in other women. "If you have these" conditions, Bush says, "you need to check with your doctors." Having even one risk factor doubles the chance of developing heart disease, experts say, and having three or more increases it tenfold.

"I urge women to call your mothers and sisters and ... get those screenings," Bush says. Her message is especially timely. Two new studies released last month at the International Conference on the Prevention of Dementia, in Washington, reaffirm the link between heart disease and Alzheimer's disease. Researchers point to growing evidence that the risk factors for heart attack and stroke also increase the chance of cognitive decline. Treating those factors - lowering high blood pressure with medicine, for example - may lower the chances of developing dementia or slow its progression. What's good for your heart, the experts say, is also good for your brain.