22. Heart ❤️

For this one, I consulted my sister who’s a Nurse Practitioner specialized in all things heart!

The first thing I learned is that heart disease = cardiovascular disease. This is an “umbrella” condition that’s main symptoms are things like heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrest, etc.

The fact illustrated comes from the CDC Fact Sheet on heart disease.

My sister also talked about the differences of typical heart attack signs for males vs. females. The majority of studies on this topic are done with males, so women will often miss their symptoms.

Heart.org talks more about this…

As with men, women’s most common heart attack symptom is chest paint or discomfort. But women are somewhat more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting and back or jaw pain.

Even though heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the United States, women often chalk up the symptoms to less life-threatening conditions like acid reflux, the flu or normal aging.

Very interesting and a good thing to keep in mind.