By American Heart Association
A new forecast on women’s heart health offers many causes for concern – but also highlights how women can take charge of their future, experts say.
The forecast comes in a scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published Feb. 25 in the journal Circulation. The report predicts that by 2050:
- more than 59% of women in the U.S. will have high blood pressure, up from less than 49% today.
- more than 25% of women will have diabetes, up from about 15%.
- more than 61% of women will have obesity, up from about 44%.
- as those risk factors become more common, the overall prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in women will rise to 14.4% from 10.7%
What can women and girls do to buck the trends in cardiovascular disease?
You might not know you have high blood pressure, Joynt Maddox said, because it might not cause any symptoms. “But your blood vessels know,” she said. “And as you get older, if your blood pressure has been uncontrolled, then the damage is there.”
So acting now can pay off down the road. Suggestions she and Mauricio made on how to lower risks include:
- Know your numbers for blood pressure, blood sugar and blood cholesterol and body weight. Joynt Maddox called this “the most important thing” a woman can do to protect her cardiovascular health. High blood pressure raises the risk of heart attack and stroke, but it can be treated, and “is the single biggest modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease,” she said.
- Be aware that risk factors for cardiovascular disease develop early but “are very much within the hands of our patients to do something about,” Mauricio said. The basics are outlined in the Association’s Life’s Essential 8, which includes behaviors such as eating better, being more active, quitting tobacco and getting healthy amounts of sleep.
- If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, Mauricio suggested choosing just one thing and focusing on that. “If you want to make sustainable change, you can’t do it all at once because you’re going to burn out,” she said.
