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Nancy Rosen,
CEO,
Sister to Sister: Everyone Has a Heart Foundation
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Sister
to Sister: Everyone Has a Heart Foundation Encourages Women
to Get a Heart-Health Check
Despite strides made
in awareness, the majority
of American women still don’t know that heart disease
is the number one killer of women. The good
news is that in most cases, it can be prevented by making
simple lifestyle changes.
Sister to
Sister: Everyone Has a Heart Foundation, Inc. encourages
women to get a heart-health check: screenings for their
cholesterol, blood pressure and blood glucose levels along
with their body mass index.
“Women
need to be advocates for their own heart health,”
said Dr. Roger Blumenthal, director of the Johns Hopkins
Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease and
Sister to Sister’s special medical advisor.
“It’s
especially critical because more women die from heart disease
than men. Also, women’s symptoms are sometimes quite
different than they are for men,”
Dr. Blumenthal explained.
Sister to
Sister is a national grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated
to bringing free heart disease screenings and heart-healthy
information and support to women. Sister to Sister’s
prevention activities culminate on the third
Friday of every February on National Woman’s Heart
Day® with fun, interactive health fairs
held in many of the largest U.S. cities.
The
Charlotte health fair with free heart-health screenings
will be held at the Charlotte Convention Center from 8:30
a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, February 17, 2006.
Representing Sister
to Sister, Dr. Blumenthal says that women need to get a
heart-health check every year. To best understand their
hearts, Dr. Blumenthal says that women need to know the
following information.
Q. Where
is considered the normal range for cholesterol?
A. Anything under 200 mg/dL.
Q.
What is the desirable level for HDL, the “good”
cholesterol?
A. Above 50 mg/dL.
Q.
What is the desirable level for LDL, the “bad”
cholesterol?
A. Less than 100 mg/dL.
Q. What
is the desirable level for triglycerides (a form of fat)?
A. Less than 150 mg/dL.
Q.
What is the normal blood pressure level?
A. 120/80 mm Hg.
Q.
What is a desirable level for blood sugar?
A. Less than 100 mg/dL.
Q. What
is a normal body mass index? (Body mass index, or BMI,
is a measure of body fat based on weight and height.)
A. Normal is less than 25. A BMI of more than
25 is overweight. A BMI of more than 30 is obese.
Q.
Can you prevent heart disease?
A. Up to 82 percent of heart disease
is preventable.
Q.
What isn’t preventable?
A. Two things: One is having a family
history of early heart disease; the other is being 55
or older.
Q. What
is the single most important thing you can do to prevent
having a first heart attack?
A. Quit smoking; close seconds are exercising,
eating a healthy diet and losing weight. Ask your physician
for more information on how to be heart healthy.
For more information
about the National Woman’s Heart Day® Health Fair,
visit www.womansheartday.org. |
NANCY
ROSEN, B.S, M.S., Ph.D.
Prior
to joining Sister to Sister, she was an executive for Washington Sports
and Entertainment. Formerly, Ms. Rosen was the executive director of the
American Foundation for Autistic Children. In her tenure as executive
director, Ms. Rosen originated and coordinated training modules for professionals
in the field of autism in five countries: South Africa, Israel, Argentina,
Turkey and Ghana. She was responsible for the supervision of staff psychiatrists,
developmental pediatricians, physical therapists and occupational therapists,
staff social workers, and activity therapists.