national black leadership commission on aids also known as in the law is to educate mobilize and how life leaders to meet the challenge of fighting hiv aids and other health disparities in disease is the leading cause of death for women in the united states killing two hundred eighty nine thousand seven hundred fifty eight women in twenty thirteen that's about one in every four the male deaths although heart disease is sometimes thought of as a man's disease around the same number of women and men die each year of heart disease in the united states despite increases in awareness over the past decade only fifty four percent of women recognize that heart disease is their number one ally heart disease the leading cause of death for african american and white women here in the united states among hispanic women high disease and camps are caused roughly the same number of deaths each year and for american indian or alaska native and asian or pacific islander women heart disease is second only to cancer about five point eight percent of all white women seven point six percent of black women and five point six percent of mexican american women have coronary heart disease it's almost two thirds sixty four percent of women who die suddenly of coronary heart disease have no previous sometimes so even if you have no symptoms you may still science in nursing from william patterson university in new jersey and her masters of science and nursing was obtained from new york university currently she is in a role in the back to our program a volunteer she volunteers we have several organizations the american heart association the association of black cardiologists harlem help the heart and does as many speaking engagements as possible to have spread the word about heart disease and how it changed her life she shares information with the people in her community and where she works so welcome to day tania and sharon and disease and you know making it real in terms of your personal story friends really really paying for it so why don't we start with you tanya and just tell us a little about what led to your work in the whole area cardiovascular disease well i think what started my love for cardiology was my undergraduate training at william patterson my senior year we were able to do one fall semester of been doing community health i have not left cardiology since then so is there any one person you credit would perhaps having influence your decision based on what you read about or work with them or know about them i would say the one person i would think that really influenced me was my father's father he died suddenly of a massive heart attack unexpectedly sitting at home my father he's from georgia my father travels every year to go home to georgia for christmas and they called my mother my father called us we were home in new jersey and said pop has had a heart attack it doesn't look good and that was the beginning part of the beginning for me but that was prior to me going to college so i would credit me wanted to know more about heart fact there are studies right now that suggest that heart disease is indeed hereditary especially among the african american communities and that african americans are more salt sensitive meaning that our bodies retain sodium more often than other ethnicities so the retention of sodium leads to higher blood pressure and high blood pressure can actually contribute to worsening of cardiovascular diseases and here and yes as i said i commend you for the work that you do on the show and sharing your story and creating more when just talk a little bit about what were the circumstances that led you  to being given the diagnosis and what was your first reaction to this is my first reaction was wow i must say i was very shocked i have heart disease and it went undetected for forty seven years so i don't have any information leading up to it any family history that would have indicated that i would be subject to possibly having a heart attack like most americans most folks you see the commercial on television heart attack you know i normally get up you walk away from the t v you go in a kitchen you could get some water you do something into the commercials and you read it isn't that we've not referring to me because  only knowledge of heart attacks was caucasian older men you know in a few women but nothing of african american because that's not what was displayed on television nor anyone ever spoke of it i i had the symptoms i had every symptom of having a heart attack i just didn't know the symptoms i explained to my physician at the time the symptoms that i was having but he shows me off he kind of said oh  lose weight which most doctors every time you complain about something for a woman they tell you to go lose weight losing weight is definitely not the answer i mean i almost lost permanent weight but you know i went further so when i was at home and i was going to cook dinner and i went to get some chicken out of the deep freezer so i've been over to get it and when i stood up i had a sharp pain it went straight across the lower part of my back and it just went down my legs and i went back up to my shoulders and i kind of stood there and i said what the hell was that because the shock it hit me so hard that it knocked me down at this point i'm confused as to what's going on the first thing i said was this is that's the only thing that i can relate it to because that's the only thing that i've heard about five head you know but not that bad it's like wow this is the worst back spasms i've ever had in my life you know and to fast forward i ended up  walking i actually walk to urgent care i walk four blocks to urgent care not knowing again i'm having a heart attack i'm getting ready to possibly bite the bullet but  i made it to urgent care with the grace of god i made it to urgent care and when i got there i was completely wiped out and i just did this to the nurse at the front desk and the next thing you know i woke up and people were working on me and talking to me in pushing pills in my mouth i don't know what's going on so once the cardiologist came in and spoke to me says i so how are you doing i said wow these back spasms had a heart attack so could you imagine the shock i'm forty six more why yes yes the while was huge because at age forty seven active still volunteer ing but not for the organizations i volunteer for now different organizations i work with children basketball program dykeman basketball that means in the private some with the kids in doing best mom doing sports things i don't know how to play basketball but if somebody asks me catch the ball monitor i think as the wall but and just going to the gym working out being aware that i'm forty seven and i got to keep myself motivated and keep myself in good health so i was in that realm of doing all of that i actually got kicked out of the gym someone in the gym saw me on one of the equipment and i must of looked very fatigued and completely wiped out and they axed me to come over cycle of the machine so i got off the machine and let me check blood pressure i've never had high blood pressure it's gone be normal so are and he took my blood pressure and he said you have to leave the gym and you all this is before the heart attack so and i'm saying this to say that i head against all of the symptoms i had shortness of breath i had dizziness i was blacking out couldn't explain it couldn't walk from where i'm sitting at to your chair with out getting x when i say dizzy i mean the dizziness was so extreme that it would sit me down and i just couldn't catch my breath at times for no reason i'm walking all of a sudden the world would come and just get dark and i'm explaining this to the old physician and he  brushed me off you know what he said to me when i told my heart attack he says wow i'm so sorry to hear that i said but i told you when you took an e k g you said i had a slight heart murmur but you that's it and you told me to go lose weight symptoms and women can often and most often the very different from men just pain down the on in the chest so talk to us a little about symptoms because we heard a lot about some different ones that clearly were in play along the way to actual had been the hard to absolutely absolutely sharing actually hit on quite a few of them are women with heart disease we especially minority women women have ended gesturing they just think it's guess or they have upper back pain something primarily in between miscopied your shoulder blades and they complain of a discomfort there but they don't know what it is and if you  add another diagnosis of depression to that one would think all this is just my depression aggravating me so it's really not something physical that i should be worried about and so they don't really go and seek treatment for it but the classic symptoms that sharon mentioned the dizziness the shortness of breath the arm pain the fatigue high brush high blood pressure of course that's a classic sentiment but it can be high or low  yes definitely because i have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that's where the heart muscle my heart was very thick so as to say i have a nice thick heart and i splaying it like this to my friends and anyone i'm talking to because sometimes when you when you talk in terms that people can understand it clicks home so we say my heart grows like a chuck steak your heart grows like a flank steak i want to flank steak i don't want to chuck steak because it takes a longer time for the blood to get through now for the testing had been done which would be an echocardiogram once that physician at the time and explained him all those things if you would have sent me for echocardiogram or had i known about it echocardio x for it meaning if i hadn't known the symptoms of a heart attack then i would have went in they would have saw that my heart muscle was damaged and then they could have proceeded they probably would have receded more with medication is what i'm told because some physicians say well we would have just treated you with more men of medication and then it depends on how bad or how worse i would have gotten again remember this is forty seven years walking around i was a gymnast was swimming i ran track and field when i was young i was very active i had problems but there was nothing so you're talking about back in the seventy's no one was paying attention to a child save my chest heard of a campaigning put some robitussin so on and get some sleep awareness it is so incredibly important because even related to the work that we do black or educating especially the black community about the impact of age or b s especially among heterosexual black women who believe partly that if you're not white gay or even out a black l g b t person there's no threat and they are just not paying attention to what can be done to prevent hiv which is preventable while there still is no cure so as i listened to you the whole education awareness is so incredibly important so you've been doing this now for how many something's i feel something say something and i often tell i want to call them patients because i'm not by russians but i citizens or my community members or if if you feel something i'm telling you what to look for  and right now last i spoke with dr fergus we have about two hundred participants who come out a little out of that the numbers are definitely climbing and it's so important because not only do we talk about that at harlem healthy hearts not only do we talk about heart disease we talk about diet be as we i mean we cover everything are because it's not stand alone right yes and we talk about your weight in we talk about nutrition healthy eating how to afford the foods that you need to eat healthy and we cover so much in the area and it's not and you would be amazed how many people that come in to  listen to find out because one of the things that i always say and we're all guilty of it especially as women our girlfriends are only our girlfriends they are not our doctors and when using my girlfriends as my doctors for forty seven years you only said forty seven days after the heart attack that they got cut off the doctor part and i only see physicians about things that pertain to my health exact my girlfriends they great advocate and a great supporter for the community and i met her sporadically just through a meeting at the american heart association as she was speaking outside wow this lady's r powerful have to know she is and found out who she is was and how she is just connect with immunity i myself want to always be connected to the community i always want to be that person to try to make a difference if i make a difference and one life just one i am i can't even tell you the amount of happiness that i would feel because and i get emotional because having this heart attack it's not something i tell people if i could trade it off with you i would but it's not a trade option it was given to me because this is the seat i was given to do what i'm doing now if you'd ax me this ten years ago research one of the things that we often as african americans don't actively participate in trials you know research trials and we know a lot of the stems back to the  there yeah and but yet research is so important to understanding a lot of what you've been talking about how we respond what are some of the symptoms what's the best way to treat  saying in terms of trying involvement in the research and i we see and focus on black women in the research that's been done especially like through the national l and so for i wish i had better numbers for you but when i speak to patients in clinical practice there's still that fear that exists among the black community especially  for fear of actor going to be hurt physically while whatever it is that the trial entails so that is the biggest reason why black members of the african american community do not want to participate in trials however i think that some are starting to come around not as much as i would like to see because i do agree with you i think that we have to do more research on black women african americans why don't we just take a few minutes starting with easier to just make any comments that you didn't or important for the viewing audience to know that perhaps we haven't covered just briefly i think we've covered a lot and  there's so much more clinical trials we need to know how and how do we become involved in clinical clinical trials and what a clinical trial is a lot of things we don't do is because we're not educated on how to do them and what they are so education is is at the top of the list is a tin and want to get educated as i become educated and continue to become educated about heart disease that right there makes a huge huge difference and i want to thank you for having me here tanya as well as coming and i'm not just having a face i always say when you see my face you're looking at your face ok and in closing comments hypertension diabetes obesity depression smoking hypercholesterolemia all these things contribute to heart disease and i think that we have to do more with putting that awareness out into the community so we can be more educated on how we can work to prevent cardiovascular disease from its onset and if we can treat it if we can pick up early we can treat it early and incessant worst to the point where we just story ever will go even through sunglasses and how people asked the question the manhattan neighborhood network brings these programs to you to better inform you the viewer about the important topics that impact your health and well being so please let your family friends and neighbors know about this program and and for them nation about what has been presented can be found in black and website so on behalf of myself i thank you for joining us and hope that you