Gabby Logan encourages women to love their hearts

TV personality Gabby Logan is supporting the British Heart Foundation’s Love Your Heart campaign working with Flora pro.activ to help raise awareness of heart disease amongst women.

Gabby says: “I am thrilled to be part of the Love Your Heart campaign. There seems to be a common misconception that its largely men who die of heart disease. The truth is, heart disease is the single biggest killer of women in the UK.

“A key risk factor for heart disease is high cholesterol, but the good news is you can help protect yourself and lower your cholesterol with simple changes to your diet and lifestyle.”  Are you talking about heart disease?

Our recent research found that 84% of British women don’t talk about heart disease. A total of 40% of women are more likely to discuss politics, and 15% would prefer to gossip than talk about the potentially life threatening disease.

Our Love Your Heart campaign aims to get more women thinking about their heart health, and having these critical conversations with friends, family members and colleagues.

A total of 53% of women said they would be likely to talk about health risks in general with a friend, 65% with a family member, and reassuringly 79% with a GP. But as many women think heart disease is only something that affects overweight, middle-aged men and don’t realise they are at risk too, it doesn’t feature highly on the health conversation list.

More than half agree that heart disease is a relevant issue for themselves and their friends, suggesting that the UK’s single biggest killer of women needs to feature more prominently in conversation.

If a woman experienced one of the signs or symptoms of a heart attack, such aschest pains, sweating, shortness of breath, neck and jaw pain, upper back pain, abdominal pain, fatigue, vomiting, indigestion-like pain or nausea, 59% wouldn’t talk to anyone because they don’t think it’s serious or important, and 49% don’t think it’s a big deal. Surprisingly, 69% of women would need to experience three or more symptoms of a heart attack before they would consider getting medical help.

Our Senior Cardiac Nurse, Doireann Maddock, said: “It’s a myth that it’s just men who die of heart disease. The truth is heart disease is the single biggest killer of women in the UK and it kills 3 times more women than breast cancer.

“Fortunately, heart disease is often preventable, so it’s essential we get more women thinking about their heart health so they can then make positive changes to their diet and lifestyle to help protect their hearts in future.”

Every year we save thousands of lives thanks to our ground-breaking research and innovative health initiatives. But we rely on the generosity of people like you to help us continue our vital work .

Support the British Heart Foundation with an ongoing monthly donation from pay.