New Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation campaign focuses on women’s risk factors

First at Five: FAST Learner The Heart and Stroke Foundation is focusing on women’s stroke risk.

In Canada, heart disease and stroke is the number on cause of premature death among women, and 89 per cent don’t know the risk factors unique to them.

That’s why the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada has launched a new campaign highlighting the risk factors unique to women, which change and vary over the course of their lives.

“Research historically has mostly been focused on men until recently,” says Christine Faubert, who serves as the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation’s director of health equity and mission impact. “That’s why right now there is emerging evidence and information for women.”

A stroke happens when blood stops flowing to any part of the brain, damaging brain cells. The campaign wants to make women aware there are varying risk factors during their reproductive years and beyond. Estrogen’s protective effect on women’s heart and brain fluctuate at different stages leading to the unique risk factors.

During reproductive years, women tend to be at a lower risk than men thanks in large part to their estrogen levels. There are several factors that can effect a women’s long-term heart and brain health during this time, like getting an early or late first period.

Hormonal contraceptives, fertility treatments, and other pregnancy related disorders like high blood pressure can also effect the risk in this stage of life. Pregnant women are also three times as likely to suffer a stroke compared to others of similar age.

In menopause years, the production of less estrogen increases the risk of heart and stoke conditions, especially in those who begin menopause before 45.

Post-menopause the protective sex hormones begin to disappear from a women’s body, increasing the risk. Other risks at this stage are similar in both men and women.

The severity and mortality rates of strokes tend to be greater in women overall.

“We want women to really be aware of their risks and get that 11 per cent much higher,” says Faubert on the fact only 11 per cent of women know the risks throughout their life. “When women are empowered with that information they can do something and they can work with their health-care professional to really monitor their risks… and then develop a plan to really monitor or reduce them.”

Other more common factors that can lead to heart disease and stroke in both men and women like smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a lack of physical exercise among others all have great impacts on women, according to Faubert.

“Social roles that they take on as women like taking care of elders, taking care of children, they tend to put there health on the side,” Faubert adds. “So it puts women more at risk compared to men.”

Famed maritime singer Measha Brueggergosman-Lee has had multiple heart-related scares in her life. The first was back in June 2009 when she had surgery to repair a dissected aorta, and the second was a decade later when she suffered a heart attack that lead to a double arterial bypass surgery.

She is encouraged to see a campaign rolling out focused on women’s health.

“The more we can get that message out there the better off our women will be,” says the singer. “Because it is the number one killer, cardiac events, for women and in particular black women.”

She adds everyone should be aware as well of the basic signs of a stroke, which can easily be remembered under the acronym FAST.

Faubert advises people to never drive themselves or someone suffering a stroke to the hospital and to always call an ambulance to ensure the best care and minimal brain damage.

“Ambulance and paramedics will be able to intervene right away,” Faubert says. “As soon as the person is in the ambulance they can provide care and know where exactly to take the person to the best hospital for the best care.”

More general stroke information, and the full interactive online platform focusing on women’s health can be found on the organization’s website. Faubert adds over the next two to three years, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada will be expanding their online resource hub.