With cardiovascular disease being the No. 1 killer of women, a panel of medical experts on Wednesday offered tips on prevention and lifestyle that could help save lives during the Go Red for Women Luncheon at the Odessa Marriott Hotel & Conference Center.
Mrs. America Regina Stock said women need to be selfish about “loving and valuing yourself enough to do a little self-care and keep yourself healthy mentally and physically.”
“As mothers, we want the best for our children and if nobody has ever told you let me be the first — it’s okay to want the best for yourself as well because honey, you deserve it. And the men in here you deserve it, too,” Stock said.
Emcee Stephanie Rivas said the American Heart Association’s mission is to create a world of longer, healthier lives.
“Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer of women. It claims more lives than all forms of cancer combined. But many incidences of cardiovascular disease can be prevented through healthy lifestyle changes,” Rivas said.
She added that this is important to her because she’s on the other side of 50 and her dad has heart disease. Her doctor told her her cholesterol was higher than he would like.
“So yes, I’m already at risk even before all of the other mentioned things. Whatever your reason for being here today, there is no greater force than women united by purpose and connected by passion. We all must act now to protect women’s heart health and well-being at all ages. Our hope is that you leave this event today ready to be an agent of change for all women. I want us all to commit to being the beat for ourselves and supporting one another, in our individual health journeys because together there is nothing that a woman cannot achieve,” Rivas said.
She added that the leadership of Sydney Gore, chair of the committee that organized the luncheon, enabled them to raise more than $120,000 toward the Go Red for Women lifesaving mission. Rivas said that number would go up even more on Wednesday.
The expert panelists included Dr. Kathryn Hutton, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, assistant clerkship director OB-GYN and regional director of the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health; Dr. Stephanie Kubacak, board-certified in internal medicine, Dr. Manohar Angirekula, board certified in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology, and pharmacist Chelcee Porter, founder of Porter Wellness Functional Medicine Consulting.
“Our discussion is going to be focused on the American Heart Association’s Life Essential Eight. This lifestyle checklist highlights the most crucial elements for maintaining cardiovascular health. These include maintaining a healthy diet, abstaining from smoking or vaping, engaging in physical activity, controlling blood pressure and weight, managing cholesterol and blood sugar levels, and most recently prioritizing healthy sleep,” Rivas said.
She noted that recent studies have shown the crucial role of sleep in heart and brain health.
“By considering these health and lifestyle factors individuals and health care providers can then evaluate cardiovascular risk and develop strategies to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and other chronic conditions,” Rivas added.
Hutton said there are things that can happen during pregnancy that can be used to predict cardiovascular disease later in life.
“If you’ve been diagnosed in pregnancy with high blood pressure, gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, eclampsia, peripartum cardiomyopathy, gestational diabetes. Those are very important things that happened during pregnancy that we control, and then we tend to just kind of forget about them. So I would encourage you to definitely tell your primary care provider about these diseases and conditions that you’ve had during pregnancy, because they can increase your risk for cardiovascular disease up to six fold later in life,” Hutton said.
Kubacak said one of the biggest reasons for everything is stress.
“Whether it’s the way you eat, becoming a diabetic and then eventually having high cholesterol, or whether it’s the way we don’t deal with our stress and we don’t exercise. I also think that all of these things are very important, but stress is one of the biggest factors that leads to everything,” Kubacak said.
As a cardiologist, Angirekula said diabetes is very highly correlated to heart disease and diabetes is very prevalent.
“Diabetes is on the rise because of the lifestyle, changes in dietary habits, sedentary lifestyle, and exercise. It’s becoming a pandemic,” Angirekula said.
He added controlling diabetes is an important factor in preventing heart disease.
Porter said as a functional pharmacist, eating healthy is the most important to her.
“Every single thing that you eat … is not only providing fuel for your body to function, but it’s providing information. Every single different color of food that you introduce into your body has different phytonutrients, different phytochemicals, that are supporting all the many processes in your body,” she said.
Porter said if you go to the American Heart Association website to learn more about the Essential Eight, it talks about how to support each one because diet really does “lay a foundation to prevent these different disease states.”
Even making minor changes like not eating out as much and choosing vegetables can help. Start slow and that will start a pattern.
