And women themselves are learning that their own attention to their health must not be limited to an annual visit to the gynecologist. If nothing could be done about heart disease, all of this attention might be academic. Diet and lifestyle changes can be very effective preventive efforts for some forms of heart disease. To work best, these efforts should begin early in life, long before you perceive yourself to be at risk. And if heart disease does strike, modern science and technology have an ever growing arsenal of weapons available to successfully fight it and restore its victims to healthy and productive lives.
Statistics reflect an encouraging trend.
Better understanding of preventative measures and increasing sophistication in diagnosis and treatment have resulted in decreasing rates of heart disease in both men and women. For example, in the 1980s, death rates from heart disease went down 27 percent for white women and 22 percent for African American women. When we talk about heart disease we are talking about not just disorders of the heart itself but of a variety of conditions that affect the body's circulatory system. A quick lesson in anatomy can help. The heart is the central organ of the circulatory system, a muscular pump a little larger than your fist that continuously forces blood through the lungs, where it takes on oxygen, and then through the arteries, capillaries, and veins that make up the rest of the circulatory system.