Filipino-American Club of the Jersey Shore, Monmouth County, New Jersey, filamorg.com

During the launching of Heart Month 2009 at a mall, the Philippine Heart Association (PHA) said that 92 percent of Filipino women have at least one risk factor and the mortality rate, owing to heart ailments is now increasing.

“The impression that men have a monopoly of heart diseases is not correct. There are more women now that are at risk of cardiovascular diseases,” Francisco Dizon, of the Heart Foundation of the Philippines, said in his speech during the affair.

More than 20 percent of women in the country have risk factors like smoking, high cholesterol, hypertension, obesity and diabetes.

“Women are prone to increasing their stress level owing to overwork at work and at home…because of that, they are at high risk of cardiovascular diseases,” she added.

PHA vice president Maria Teresa Abola said men are really prone to CVD all through life, while women are less likely to acquire CVD during their reproductive years because they are protected by estrogen.

However, she explained that when women reach their perimenopausal stage, normally age 55 and above, or as soon as estrogen is depleted from women’s bodies, they catch up with men, or even exceed that of men.

World Health Organization (WHO) acting representative in the Philippines Michael Voniatis reported that 17 million people die of CVD worldwide and 120,000 Filipinos die of CVD a year.

And if current trends are allowed to continue, WHO reported that by 2015, an estimated 20 million people will die from cardiovascular disease mainly from heart attacks and strokes.

He also said that in order to avoid the risk factor of CVD, people, especially women, should practice a healthy lifestyle.

“Healthy lifestyle is the best prevention pill to put cardiovascular diseases at bay,” Abola added.

Cardiovascular diseases include coronary heart disease that leads to heart attacks, cerebro-vascular disease, raised blood pressure [hypertension], peripheral artery disease, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease and heart failure.

There are two types of CVD; modifiable and non-modifiable.

Modifiable cardiovascular diseases are caused by the kind of lifestyle of people, including smoking, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, consumption of too much sugar, stress and obesity; while nonmodifiable CVD is genetic in nature.