Climbing the ladder – is it really worthwhile? Or is it more the way we do it? I began to wonder after I read a sobering article – “Heartstopper” – about heart disease in professional women, in the latest issue of PINK, a US magazine for professional career women.

Women and Heart Disease – The Facts.

  • Heart disease kills more women than men each year.
  • Heart disease is the number one killer of women, causing more deaths than all kinds of cancer combined (including breast cancer).
  • One third of all deaths among women each year are due to heart disease.
  • 1 in 10 women aged 45-64 lives with heart disease.

A very concerning fact revealed in this article was that an American Heart Association survey found that only 8% of primary care physicians were aware that more women than men die of heart disease. This suggests that they may not be the best people to pick up the risks for us. It brings us back to what I have been saying in previous blog posts and comments – that we women have to be able to tune into ourselves and learn to pick up the signs that things are not well with us. In fact the article calls for us to listen to our body. Once our heart is damaged it can only be patched up, not repaired, and then we have to live on the edge, not knowing when it may stop!

Heart disease may result from a congenital abnormality. We may also be predisposed to it by family history. It’s stress, however, that I want to talk about here as a precipitator of heart disease – what it does to our blood pressure, how it causes us to eat and drink the wrong thing in the wrong way, raising our cholesterol and weight.

PINK tells the story of Pamela Serure, a successful career woman in the fashion industry, who had a hectic but “exhilarating” working life, who then had a heart attack at age 47. The alarming thing was how long it took for someone to diagnose it after many different things were suggested. What was even more concerning was that the EKG and stress test she had were normal, but before she left the doctor’s room she had more pain and asked for more tests which showed 98% blockage to an artery. The result - bypass surgery. She has now changed her lifestyle, but the fact that she now lives with heart disease will not change.

Listen To And Get To Know Our Bodies.

So what can we as professional women do for ourselves. What do we need to listen for in our bodies? What do we need to know about the impact of stress on our lives?
  • The first thing we have to do is STOP, LOOK and LISTEN. If we don’t quite feel right and it lasts for more than a couple of weeks, we need to take that feeling seriously, even if we cannot quite identify what it is.
  • Take some quiet time and breathe slowly and tune into our body and try and connect with that feeling. Is it tightness, pain, pressure, discomfort? How would we describe it? Where exactly are we feeling it in our body?
  • When do we feel it – morning, night, standing, sitting or lying down, after we’ve eaten, or after we’ve eaten or drunk something in particular, at the computer or meetings or after we’ve been with a particular person? Yes, some people can be great stressors!

This way we will get to know our body and what it is trying to say to us. We have to stop, however, to do this. Whatever we do, don’t ignore it.

Empowering Ourselves To Take Action.

We don’t necessarily have to rush straight off to a doctor. Take action ourselves. Make changes in our live before it is too late.

  • Slow down and pace ourselves better. If we never take breaks at work, begin to take them. Get away from our desk, even go outside.
  • If we eat lunch on the run, make a decision to have a lunch break. Get out of the office which shouts “pressure and intensity” at us. Unwind, stretch and relax.
  • If we usually grab takeaways, high fat and high sugar foods, make a change to fresh food as natural and energy inducing as possible.
  • Drink plenty of water.
  • Get plenty of sleep. Maybe the traditional 8 hours is not enough for us at this time.
  • Exercise – the greatest stress breaker!
  • As part of our relaxation, make a commitment to do something that puts us in touch with our inner spirit – take up watercolour painting, learn a musical instrument, do a creative writing course, spend more time in the garden, visit art galleries or attend concerts, listen to music, have a regular massage, get a facial.
  • Women in the 45+ age bracket often have many additional pressures on them outside of their high-powered professional jobs. They often have adolescent children testing the waters of life and testing their parents at the same time. They can also have ageing parents who require a great deal of their time and attention. They may also be coping with a body that is challenging them with menopause. They frequently are the primary emotional carer in the family, responsible for everyone’s well-being. They leave work every day to face a second shift at home, doing housework and a whole range of activities that too often their partners don’t share equally with them. All of this adds to their stress.
  • If this is our life, we need to have some important conversations with our partners and children, our brothers and sisters and our boss or manager at work.

Seeking Professional Help – A Strength Not A Weakness.

  • Seeing a medical practitioner and having some tests done can often give great peace of mind. We will have learnt a lot about our symptoms and be able to communicate much more clearly what is happening for us.
  • A coach may be able to help us achieve good, healthy work-life balance in our professional life.
  • It may, however, be a mentor who could be much more helpful, another professional woman who has already walked the path we are now on and who could help us find the balance. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can learn from other’s experience.
  • It might be that we need to join a gym, get a personal trainer or find a friend who’ll walk with us on a regular basis – to provide a discipline for our exercise.
  • Even learning meditation or yoga may be the answer for us.

Whatever, let’s keep our hearts beating healthily!

PS. I recommend you go to the Pink magazine website. It is well worth a read. There is much of interest there. You might also like to subscribe. The subscription is very reasonable. Go to the website at http://www.pinkmagazine.com

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