Many women over 35 think breast cancer is the biggest threat to their health.  After all, it's a woman's disease, right?  Wrong.  Though not to be taken lightly, breast cancer - and all other "female" conditions such as cervical cancer - isn't responsible for nearly as many deaths in women than the No. 1 killer of women: heart disease.

Contrary to popular belief, heart disease is the leading cause of death of women in the United States.  Heart disease or cardiovascular disease (CVD), which includes heart attacks and strokes, claims 504,000 women in the United States every year according to the American Heart Association.  It kills more women than the next, 16 causes of death combined, including breast cancer.

Get the Facts

Heart disease is often incorrectly called "man's disease," but statistics tell another story.  The facts are truly staggering:

•One in 10 American women ages 45 to 64 has some form of heart disease
•One if four women in the United States over age 65 has some form of heart disease.
•Women are more likely than men to die from heart attacks within a few weeks.
•Within six years after a heart transplant, 38 percent of women will die, compared with 25 percent of men.

Heart attacks alone kill almost 250,000 women each year, and women under age 50 who suffer heart attacks are twice as likely to die from them as men in the same age group.  Experts believe that one of the major reasons that women are less likely to recover from heart attacks than men is because, until recently, treatment and diagnosis of CVD in women was based on what physicians know about men.  As a result, women were diagnosed later than men, which limited their treatment options.

For more on this article see the latest issue of KALEIDOSCOPE MAGAZINE.