Does heart disease really kill more women than breast cancer?
A. Ten times more women die from heart disease than from breast cancer. However, in a recent poll, only 18 percent of women correctly identified heart disease as the leading cause of death 39 percent thought it is breast cancer. In the United States, more than 500,000 women die of heart disease each year. Two-thirds of such women who die suddenly had no previous heart disease symptoms. There are things you can do to help prevent heart disease and the rest of this column pertains to men as well. Get a fasting blood sugar test, especially if you’re overweight. Any value over 100 is too high and increases your chance of heart disease. Two values over 126 means you likely have diabetes. To reduce blood sugars, get more exercise. Walk an extra 10 minutes twice a day. Lose weight if overweight. An extra half-hour of exercise a day is twice as powerful as drugs in reducing blood sugars or preventing diabetes. Other heart disease risk factors are smoking, high cholesterol, low HDL (good) chole
