A Change of Heart: December 2011

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

BPA and the Female Heart

BPA, or bisphenol A, is one of the components in hard, clear plastic -- those ubiquitous refillable water bottles and baby bottles, as well as in the linings of canned foods.

Now researchers at the University of Cincinnati, in an NIH-funded study, have shown that BPA affects female hearts: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337035/title/BPA_sends_false_signals_to_female_hearts

What struck me is that the researchers are calling this a "gender-specific vulnerability to arrhythmias."

I'm hoping that this is a positive development in researchers realizing that males and females are not identical and research that just includes males is not automatically applicable to females.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Pro Heart, Pro Holiday

I'm still at the stage where it's absolutely thrilling to see my name and story in print; hopefully I'll never get so jaded that I become blase about these things.

Bayer has a website called I Am Pro Heart, aiming to educate women about heart disease. There is, of course, a profit motive too; Bayer sells aspirin, and daily aspirin is often recommended for patients who've already had a heart attack or stroke.

There's also a large gallery of patient stories on the site and a link for you to submit your own heart survivor story.

This is mine. I sent it in several months ago and for a few weeks was checking the site every day to see if it showed up. It never did, so I eventually quit looking. I went back to the site today for something else, and there it was. Yay!

So this post isn't *entirely* (just mostly) navel-gazing and me-me-me, I'm going to provide a link to my fellow WomenHeart Champion Carolyn's wonderful HeartSisters blog. Carolyn always has useful, interesting things to say and if you're not reading her blog, you're missing out.

Since it's December, I'm linking to her excellent piece, Best Gifts for Heart Patients. If you have someone on your holiday list who's a heart disease survivor and you're not sure what might make a good gift, check out Carolyn's excellent suggestions.

Why am I doing this?

In March of 2009 I had a heart attack. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to the doctors; I don't have any risk factors--no high blood pressure, no diabetes, no clogged arteries, no family history; plus I'm a young (in cardiac terms) female who exercises. Definitely NOT the usual suspect for a heart attack.

But tell that to my body--I had one anyway. Turns out that I experienced a rare thing called a Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection. Don't google the term unless you're prepared to be depressed by mortality rates and statistics, and the fact that doctors really have no clue about what causes some people to have them.

The bright side is that my toast landed butter side up, and I'm still here. In 2009 I put together a one-shot fanzine called A Change of Heart; you can get a PDF copy of it from efanzines.com here. This blog is an extension of that fanzine and an effort to reach more people, both in and out of of the fannish science fiction community.

If you want to read my story from the beginning, I suggest starting with this link to my wonderful husband Paul's journal:

Laura Had A Heart Attack Monday Morning.

He kept up a pretty good running commentary of what was happening while I was still in the hospital, and it starts there. The "Next" and "Previous" links move to later and earlier entries, detailing our experiences.

In October, 2010, I competed in and finished the Chapel Hill Ramblin' Rose Triathlon. These are pictures Paul took of me riding my bike and running (he couldn't get into the pool).