{"id":181203,"date":"2022-02-01T07:00:12","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=181203"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:48:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:48:17","slug":"heart-health-remains-paramount-concern-for-women-even-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/02\/heart-health-remains-paramount-concern-for-women-even-during-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Heart Health Remains Paramount Concern for Women, Even During Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Research shows that the COVID-19 pandemic, on top of everything else, may be having an indirect toll on our heart health. Potential factors include an increase anxiety and stress levels, reducing\u00a0 exercise opportunities, leading to a more sedentary lifestyle at home, or delaying health care out of fear of potentially contracting the virus. <strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_181216\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-181216\" style=\"width: 153px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-181216 img-responsive lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/LeNelle-Suharto-153x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"153\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/LeNelle-Suharto-153x300.jpg 153w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/LeNelle-Suharto-214x420.jpg 214w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/LeNelle-Suharto-339x665.jpg 339w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/LeNelle-Suharto.jpg 522w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 153px) 100vw, 153px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 153px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 153\/300;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-181216\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Open-heart surgery survivor LeNelle Suharto&#8217;s message to women: \u201cAbsolutely listen to your body and don\u2019t ignore your symptoms.&#8221; (Photo courtesy of Suharto family).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>LeNelle Suharto, 79, of Bloomfield, loves dancing, walking, playing tennis, and exercising at the gym, and staying active has always been an important part of her life. But when the pandemic struck, it became more challenging for her to remain as active as she liked. Plus, she would never want to go to the hospital in the midst of COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly before the pandemic started her heart health issues began.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"grey-sidebar floating-sidebar col-xs-12 col-sm-4\">\n  <br \/>\n<strong>Never Ignore Possible Heart Attack Symptoms<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cDon\u2019t ever brush off possible heart attack symptoms,\u201d says UConn Health Calhoun Cardiology Center cardiologist <a href=\"https:\/\/facultydirectory.uchc.edu\/profile?profileId=Tigadi-Supriya\">Dr. Supriya Tigadi<\/a>. \u201cHeart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States. One of every five female deaths is from heart disease. Sometimes women can ignore or have a delayed recognition of their heart attack symptoms, waiting to go to the Emergency Department. Also, female heart attacks can often be underdiagnosed due to underreporting of symptoms, perhaps because they feel it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Female Heart Attack Warning Signs<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chest pain or tightness\/squeezing<\/li>\n<li>Shortness of breath<\/li>\n<li>Dizziness<\/li>\n<li>Atypical symptoms:\n<ul>\n<li>Severe nausea<\/li>\n<li>Profuse sweating<\/li>\n<li>Indigestion<\/li>\n<li>Heartburn sensation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Women\u2019s Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Tips<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\n1. Visit your doctor for an <strong>annual checkup<\/strong> so they can listen to your heart.<\/p>\n<p>2. <strong>Maintain your heart health<\/strong> with a healthy blood pressure, weight or body mass index (a BMI of 25 or less), cholesterol, and glucose levels for diabetes prevention.<\/p>\n<p>3. <strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Practice a healthy diet and lifestyle.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>4. Stay on top of your heart health during and after pregnancy, and throughout your lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>5. <strong>Exercise daily <\/strong>whether brisk walking for 30 minutes a day or 150 minutes a week, or strenuous exercise including running, swimming for at least 75 minutes a week.<\/p>\n<p>6. <strong>Do not smoke.<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>7. Beware of heart attack warning signs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>8.<strong> Keep your stress low.<\/strong><br \/>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cFor a while I was finding that if I walked too quickly, rushed around, or began going upstairs, I was getting a chest pain on the right side of my chest,\u201d reports Suharto. \u201cBut if I stopped to rest, it would just go away. Overtime, every time I had the chest pains, they would go away after I sat down and was still for several minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But then things dramatically changed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI woke up one day with chest pains, pains that wouldn\u2019t go away. This time it was different. I could feel it in my back \u2013 and all the way through my body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her UConn Health primary care doctor, <a href=\"https:\/\/facultydirectory.uchc.edu\/profile?profileId=Carley-Nina\">Dr. Nina Carley<\/a>, saw her, performed an EKG, and sent her immediately to the UConn Health Emergency Department by ambulance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuddenly nurses and doctors started coming into my room \u2013 and asking why I didn\u2019t come in sooner. I told them the pain kept going away. But when I woke up with the pain for the first time, I knew something was seriously wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following a diagnostic angioplasty <a href=\"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/cardiology\/\">UConn Health\u2019s Calhoun Cardiology Center\u2019s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory<\/a> placed stents to open up her two almost-fully-blocked arteries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverything seemed good; I thought that was the end of the chest pains,\u201d says Suharto, but as the pandemic started, her heart health took another unexpected turn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy gym was closed, so every day I went for a long walk,\u201d says Suharto. \u201cBut my chest pain started again \u2013 once again on the right side. I could hardly walk as the chest pains came on but eventually again they would go away after I sat down and stayed very still.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI delayed going to the hospital, because I really didn\u2019t want to be near a hospital because of the COVID situation. But then I had a follow-up phone call with <a href=\"https:\/\/facultydirectory.uchc.edu\/profile?profileId=Tigadi-Supriya\">Dr. Supriya Tigadi,<\/a> my new UConn Health cardiologist. I told her I was having chest pains again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPut down the phone and go to the ER,\u201d Tigadi told her.<\/p>\n<p>Suharto\u2019s husband dropped her off at the Emergency Department, as he could not go in due to COVID visitor restrictions at the time.<\/p>\n<p>A repeat angioplasty showed the same arteries were blocked again, with reduced blood flow to her heart.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy only option was an open-heart coronary artery bypass surgery,\u201d Suharto says. After a week\u2019s hospital stay to get blood thinners out of her system, she had open-heart surgery on June 9, 2020. In fact, Suharto\u2019s open-heart surgery at UConn John Dempsey Hospital was the first to occur following the shutdown due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was all on my own due to COVID. I was very afraid. It was all frightening \u2013 as I didn\u2019t have anybody with me. But I woke up from surgery saying to myself, \u2018I\u2019m still here- that\u2019s a good sign.\u2019 UConn Health took very good care of me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suharto now looks forward to the end of the ongoing pandemic and it fully getting out of her way of maintaining her heart health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can do anything,\u201d says Suharto after open-heart surgery at UConn Health. \u201cI can move around, walk, go upstairs, and I can even dance if I want to. All is well!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But she is still staying close to home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDue to the COVID pandemic I\u2019m just not back to all my activities I love. For all our sake I want the pandemic to end. While it looks bleak now, I\u2019m more hopeful. It\u2019s time to get back into the world and do things we love. I want to get back into walking and my exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She has a message for all women this February Heart Month: \u201cAbsolutely listen to your body and don\u2019t ignore your symptoms. If they are persistent, don\u2019t wait, and look further into the issue with your doctor immediately. Don\u2019t get to the point where you are running to the ER with severe chest pain and heart blockages like me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suharto has always kept top of mind the typical heart attack warning signs but never thought her symptoms were a heart issue at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy pain was on the right side of my chest, and I always thought it was the left side you needed to worry about where the heart is actually located,\u201d she says. \u201cOther than my right-side chest pain, I never had any other heart issue symptoms. But it turns out my artery blockages were located on the right side of my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She feels blessed to have prevented a heart attack.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think I was very lucky. I now know I could have had a heart attack at any time,\u201d Suharto says. \u201cInterestingly, when I was having my heart issue it was just after the passing of WFSB-TV\u2019s anchor Denise D&#8217;Ascenzo. Her death from a heart attack was such a shock to all of us and a very sad moment. I have to give credit to her for my following up with Dr. Carley. It was that very next week that my chest pain was different and I called my doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Delaying health care over fears of the COVID-19 virus can have potentially deadly consequences <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":181214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1969,2193,2231,2235,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-181203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiology","category-hartford-county","category-health-well-being","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-health","series-heart-health","series-patient-perspective"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 16:33:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181203"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181310,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181203\/revisions\/181310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/181214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181203"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=181203"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=181203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}