
Every minute a woman dies from heart disease.
Every year it kills ten times more women than breast cancer.
In North Dakota --- one in three women dies from heart disease.
But there is good news from the American Heart Association: since the
Go Red for Women campaign began ten years ago, statistics for North Dakota women have dropped below those for men.
Today is National Wear Red Day and February is American Heart Month.
Women's health professional Janet Maxson says the awareness is paying off --- but there's still a long way to go for gender related disease.
She says prevention techniques are different for men and women, and gender specific research didn't gain popularity until around 1993.
Pharmaceuticals and EMS response times have improved outcomes for cardiovascular disease, but the best defense is still heart-healthy choices.
(Janet Maxson, FNP, Ph.D., Trinity Health) "All of us need a little motivation once in a while. So if we can make one little tiny impact on our risk factors for heart disease. In the country and North Dakota too, the statistics say that 90 percent of women in our state have at least one risk factor for cardiovascular diseases."
Maxson will be giving a Go Red presentation on February 26 at 6:30 at Town and Country Shopping Center.