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A myth about women Heart disease is often believed only to be a danger for men Tuesday, February 01, 2000 By Ellen Mazo, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Nancy Gerstner chewed an antacid that September morning as she drove to her job as a dental hygienist. She had been under a lot of stress with the recent birth of her son and the death of her grandmother. Gerstner dismissed her anxiety.
"When I'm stressed I always get this tightness in the middle of my chest, so I took some Tums and went to work," Gerstner said.
Once at the dentist's office, however, Gerstner suddenly experienced a feeling of being trapped, almost as if she were drowning.
"All I needed was a breath of fresh air," she said. An ambulance took Gerstner to the hospital, where emergency room staff treated her as if she had some sort of gastrointestinal ailment.
Except that Nancy Gerstner, at the of age 29, was having a heart attack.
That was in 1979, when medical schools were still teaching new doctors that chest pains in women were only psychosomatic.
Part of the problem was that women had not been represented in heart disease studies. In 1948, the Framingham Heart Study enrolled women to find out why they didn't have heart disease - and early findings indicated that women weren't at a great risk. But by the 1970s, as the women aged and went through menopause, the risks increased, dramatically.
The earlier belief was that women's estrogen levels before menopause protected them from heart disease as they got older.
"It probably has a kernel of truth," said Dr. Daniel P. Pellegrini, cardiothoracic surgeon at Mercy Hospital's Heart Institute. But not enough to keep women from suffering from heart disease.
No matter, the myth that women are not candidates for heart disease has stuck. Two decades later, it's still difficult to get the word out: That heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women.
In fact, more women than men die each year of cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke and high blood pressure, kills 250,000 more women each year than all forms of cancer combined.
Gerstner, who turns 50 on Valentine's Day, is one of the younger victims. But she had all the risks. There was a family history. Her father and his brother died after a heart attack - both at age 44.
At 5 feet, 5 inches tall, she battled weight gain, didn't exercise and her "good" cholesterol levels were low
She was a self-described perfectionist. "I always wanted to be the best. A 3.5 grade average wasn't enough. I wanted a 4.0," she said of her studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
These traits are not uncommon, Pellegrini said. "I tell patients, control factors you can control. Focus on preventive medicine."
Gerstner, who lives in White Oak with her husband, Dale, an automobile body shop owner, and their two children, David, 20, and Kristy, 24, realized she had not worked hard enough at changing her lifestyle.
This past fall, she felt a tight sensation in her chest and made an appointment with her cardiologist. Pellegrini performed bypass surgery in November.
Gerstner, who now handles the accounting books for her husband's business, is grateful for her "second chance," and has become even more dedicated to exercising and eating right. She said it's important that women take care of themselves first.
"I'm lucky. I have a loving husband and family," she said. "But women make every excuse. As my family told me, 'Nothing matters if we don't have you.' We want to take care of our families. But you have to take care of yourself."
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