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Nitza I. Alvarez, MD

About

Women’s Heart Health

By working with you to offer daily expert input and support, we’re passionately committed to giving you more time with the people you love.

  • Approximately 500k women die annually for a condition that it is preventable 80% of the time.
  • More women than men die every year because women are not taken seriously when they seek medical attention.
  • Despite increases in awareness only 56% of women recognize that heart disease is their number 1 killer.
  • Heart Disease killed 299,578 women in 2017—or about 1 in every 5 female deaths. (Source CDC)
  • 64% of women who die suddenly of heart disease have no previous symptoms

It is Dr. Alvarez’s mission to not only create awareness but to empower women to take charge of their lives. Most women struggle to be taken seriously when they have a health problem so we created a system in which every woman is seen as a whole, recognizing their uniqueness.

Nitza I. Alvarez, MD

About

Women’s Heart Health

By working with you to offer daily expert input and support, we’re passionately committed to giving you more time with the people you love.

  • 500k women die annually for a condition that it is preventable 80% of the time.
  • More women than men die every year because women are not taken seriously when they seek medical attention.
  • Despite increases in awareness only 56% of women recognize that heart disease is their number 1 killer.
  • Heart Disease killed 299,578 women in 2017—or about 1 in every 5 female deaths. (Source CDC)
  • 64% of women who die suddenly of heart disease have no previous symptoms

It is Dr. Alvarez’s mission to not only create awareness but to empower women to take charge of their lives. Most women struggle to be taken seriously when they have a health problem so we created a system in which every woman is seen as a whole, recognizing their uniqueness.

Did You Know?

  • Heart disease, also known as cardiovascular disease, is the leading cause of death in the United States, causing more than 420,000 deaths among women every year.
  • 50,000 more women than men die of heart disease every year.
  • More women than men die because women tend to be underdiagnosed and undertreated for heart disease symptoms.
  • Over eight million American women live with heart disease.
  • Each year more women die from heart disease than all cancers combined.
  • For every woman that dies from breast cancer there are six that die from heart disease.

Did You Know?

  • Heart disease, also known as cardiovascular disease, is the leading cause of death in the United States, causing more than 420,000 deaths among women every year.
  • 50,000 more women than men die of heart disease every year.
  • More women than men die because women tend to be underdiagnosed and undertreated for heart disease symptoms.
  • Over eight million American women live with heart disease.
  • Each year more women die from heart disease than all cancers combined.
  • For every woman that dies from breast cancer there are six that die from heart disease.

Want to Know More?

FAQs

When we think of heart disease, we often picture a man grabbing his chest in pain from a heart attack. But there’s a lot more going on in the body for years (even decades) beforehand that led up to that point.

Let’s start with the definition. Heart disease is also known as cardiovascular disease. The cardio refers to the heart itself and vascular is for vessels like arteries and veins that run throughout the whole body. So, heart (or cardiovascular) disease refers to medical conditions that affect the heart and vessels. There are many different medical conditions including:

  • Coronary Artery Disease (CAD): A disease of the vessels that supply blood to your heart muscle (yes, your heart needs its own arteries). This is a long-term condition that increases your risk for, and can eventually lead to, a heart attack.
  • Heart Attack: When your heart gets injured because it did not receive appropriate blood flow through the coronary arteries that supply nutrients and oxygen to the heart muscle itself.
    This is also known as myocardial infarction, or MI, and is often the result of many years living with risk factors that you might not even know, such as high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, poor eating habits, and lack of exercise.
  • Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD): A disease of the arteries that supply the rest of your body, beyond your heart. Also known as Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD).
  • Heart Failure (HF): A condition in which the heart doesn’t pump blood effectively. Either because it is weak or it cannot fill properly.
    Arrhythmia: Irregular heartbeat. A variation of the normal beat of the heart.

CAD is known to be caused by atherosclerosis (a buildup of plaque inside the walls of the arteries). This accumulation narrows the vessels that supply blood and oxygen to the heart.In women, CAD might happen even without severe plaque buildup. Women are more likely to have unusual ways of developing CAD. Compared to men, women with heart attacks usually have less plaque in their arteries to explain the cause of the obstruction of blood flow to the heart muscle.When plaques form on the walls of the arteries it also causes inflammation. Plaque formation is encouraged in several ways:

  • Increased concentrations of bad cholesterol (LDL: low-density lipoprotein) circulating in your blood (see definition for lipoprotein at the end of this section).
  • Decreased concentrations of good cholesterol (HDL: high-density lipoprotein) in your blood. These particles are heart healthy because they remove bad cholesterol from your circulation.
  • High blood pressure may enhance the penetration of LDL into the arterial walls, promoting injury. This leads to your blood vessels becoming stiffer and weaker over time.
  • Damage to the interior part of your arteries promoted by toxins such as nicotine.
  • High blood sugar affects the proper handling of triglycerides resulting in high levels in your blood. It also increases the oxidation of the LDL making it more harmful. An example of oxidation is rusting of metals. You don’t want your LDL to get too oxidized.

High blood pressure (hypertension) is also known as the silent killer because it has no symptoms and often goes undiagnosed; yet is a huge contributor to heart disease deaths. In 2013 more than 360,000 American deaths were from high blood pressure.

Hypertension is very common in industrialized nations. More than twenty percent of the general population has hypertension and many don’t even know it. High blood pressure increases greatly with age, affecting only 5.9 percent of women between the ages of eighteen and forty-four. However, that number rises to 39.1 percent for women between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four. For women who are ages sixty-five or older, nearly three out of four or 74.4 percent have high blood pressure.

High blood pressure also varies by race and ethnicity. A 2009-2010 study showed that over 40 percent of African-American women had hypertension, compared to about 25 percent of Caucasian and Hispanic women. However, 44.8 percent of women studied with uncontrolled hypertension reported that they had never received a diagnosis from a doctor.

High blood pressure increases your risk for dangerous health conditions such as:

  • First heart attack: About seven out of every ten people who experience their first heart attack have high blood pressure.
  • Heart failure (long-term): About seven of every ten people with chronic heart failure have high blood pressure.
  • Other related conditions like stroke and kidney disease (gradual loss of kidney function where the kidneys fail to filter waste products from the blood properly).

When your blood pressure is high, your blood vessels lose elasticity and become stiffer and less flexible, leading to heart disease. This results in damage to the vessels. How this injury happens is not very well understood.
This injury causes plaque formation in specific areas of the blood vessels, not throughout their whole length. The majority of the plaque buildup appears to happen around areas where the artery twists or branches. This is believed to occur as a reaction to unstable blood flow due to blood pressure. If the blood flow is altered there is an increase in the pulsing of the blood flow and the pressure is increased. This pressure between circulating blood and the lining of the vessel finally results in the lining becoming disrupted (the injury) and plaque starting to build up.

Another mechanism through which high blood pressure may be involved in heart attacks is through rupture of the plaque. When a plaque builds up inside a vessel, and that vessel has high pressure inside it, pieces of that plaque can break off, or rupture. The rupture of the plaque causes the blood inside that vessel to clot because the body treats this rupture like an injury. This is similar to the clot (scab) that forms when you cut your skin. Because this is happening inside a small vessel, the clot grows and blocks the flow of blood through that vessel. This can result in a heart attack.

When your blood pressure is high, your heart works harder, causing it more stress. In addition, high blood pressure will initially make your heart muscle get thicker as any muscle will do when it is working against high resistance. Take a look at somebody that lifts heavy weights regularly, their muscles are bigger. However, if the high blood pressure is not controlled, the heart will eventually get weak through remodeling of the muscle that grows without appropriate blood flowing to that area.

In general, many symptoms of heart attacks in women are referred to as atypical symptoms. There is nothing atypical about women’s heart attack symptoms other than they are not the symptoms that are typically experienced by men. It’s time that we recognize the differences between women’s and men’s heart health. Women and men with CAD experience different symptoms and are often treated differently and have different outcomes.

Women should look for symptoms of:

  • Shortness of breath at rest or during your everyday activities
  • Abdominal (belly) pressure or discomfort
  • Lower chest discomfort
  • Fatigue
  • Back pain (e.g., pain between your shoulder blades)
  • Nausea
  • Other classic or typical warning signs of heart attack that are more often seen in men but can appear in women include a squeezing feeling in the center of the chest that spreads towards the neck, jaw and shoulder, and chest discomfort associated with nausea, fainting, sweating, and shortness of breath.

As you can see, the most common symptoms of CAD in women can be very subtle and can create a confusing picture which may delay an accurate diagnosis. For many women, this results in many and repeated non-heart-related tests before getting to a definitive diagnosis. This can bring along with it increased worry, sadness, and frustration.

You have to be your own advocate! Unless you are paying attention to your symptoms and insist on getting a medical examination, your heart condition can go undiagnosed and, in the worst-case scenario, result in a heart attack.

If you are experiencing any of the symptoms mentioned above don’t hesitate to seek medical attention. If you feel you are not being taken seriously, find another doctor.

Despite the efforts to improve diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in women, we still encounter significant gaps in understanding how the disease starts and progresses, and how to best treat it. As a specialist in the management of heart disease I believe in working to develop the best tools to be able to identify it before it becomes a life-threatening problem, but more so, my philosophy is prevention. Prevention will always be better than treatment.

Heels vs Ties is my initial written effort to spread the word to all women. It is up to us how medical care is going to change in the future. Once you are able to recognize your risk factors and symptoms you can become your own advocate, and on that day you will be working together with many other women in closing the gender gap.

Every woman’s life matters. Some doctors are not aware of the differences, they are not aware of disparities in the care delivered to women (heels) vs. men (ties); or even of the different signs and symptoms of heart disease in women.

With this website I intend to empower you, your daughters, mother, cousins, aunts, neighbors, and friends to take charge of your health and choose life. A healthy life. And I hope it will help you prevent the stent.

Call Now: 352-717-0220
Nitza I. Alvarez, MD
Nitza I. Alvarez, MD

Want to Know More?

FAQs

When we think of heart disease, we often picture a man grabbing his chest in pain from a heart attack. But there’s a lot more going on in the body for years (even decades) beforehand that led up to that point.

Let’s start with the definition. Heart disease is also known as cardiovascular disease. The cardio refers to the heart itself and vascular is for vessels like arteries and veins that run throughout the whole body. So, heart (or cardiovascular) disease refers to medical conditions that affect the heart and vessels. There are many different medical conditions including:

  • Coronary Artery Disease (CAD): A disease of the vessels that supply blood to your heart muscle (yes, your heart needs its own arteries). This is a long-term condition that increases your risk for, and can eventually lead to, a heart attack.
  • Heart Attack: When your heart gets injured because it did not receive appropriate blood flow through the coronary arteries that supply nutrients and oxygen to the heart muscle itself.
    This is also known as myocardial infarction, or MI, and is often the result of many years living with risk factors that you might not even know, such as high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, poor eating habits, and lack of exercise.
  • Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD): A disease of the arteries that supply the rest of your body, beyond your heart. Also known as Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD).
  • Heart Failure (HF): A condition in which the heart doesn’t pump blood effectively. Either because it is weak or it cannot fill properly.
    Arrhythmia: Irregular heartbeat. A variation of the normal beat of the heart.

CAD is known to be caused by atherosclerosis (a buildup of plaque inside the walls of the arteries). This accumulation narrows the vessels that supply blood and oxygen to the heart.In women, CAD might happen even without severe plaque buildup. Women are more likely to have unusual ways of developing CAD. Compared to men, women with heart attacks usually have less plaque in their arteries to explain the cause of the obstruction of blood flow to the heart muscle.When plaques form on the walls of the arteries it also causes inflammation. Plaque formation is encouraged in several ways:

  • Increased concentrations of bad cholesterol (LDL: low-density lipoprotein) circulating in your blood (see definition for lipoprotein at the end of this section).
  • Decreased concentrations of good cholesterol (HDL: high-density lipoprotein) in your blood. These particles are heart healthy because they remove bad cholesterol from your circulation.
  • High blood pressure may enhance the penetration of LDL into the arterial walls, promoting injury. This leads to your blood vessels becoming stiffer and weaker over time.
  • Damage to the interior part of your arteries promoted by toxins such as nicotine.
  • High blood sugar affects the proper handling of triglycerides resulting in high levels in your blood. It also increases the oxidation of the LDL making it more harmful. An example of oxidation is rusting of metals. You don’t want your LDL to get too oxidized.

High blood pressure (hypertension) is also known as the silent killer because it has no symptoms and often goes undiagnosed; yet is a huge contributor to heart disease deaths. In 2013 more than 360,000 American deaths were from high blood pressure.

Hypertension is very common in industrialized nations. More than twenty percent of the general population has hypertension and many don’t even know it. High blood pressure increases greatly with age, affecting only 5.9 percent of women between the ages of eighteen and forty-four. However, that number rises to 39.1 percent for women between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four. For women who are ages sixty-five or older, nearly three out of four or 74.4 percent have high blood pressure.

High blood pressure also varies by race and ethnicity. A 2009-2010 study showed that over 40 percent of African-American women had hypertension, compared to about 25 percent of Caucasian and Hispanic women. However, 44.8 percent of women studied with uncontrolled hypertension reported that they had never received a diagnosis from a doctor.

High blood pressure increases your risk for dangerous health conditions such as:

  • First heart attack: About seven out of every ten people who experience their first heart attack have high blood pressure.
  • Heart failure (long-term): About seven of every ten people with chronic heart failure have high blood pressure.
  • Other related conditions like stroke and kidney disease (gradual loss of kidney function where the kidneys fail to filter waste products from the blood properly).

When your blood pressure is high, your blood vessels lose elasticity and become stiffer and less flexible, leading to heart disease. This results in damage to the vessels. How this injury happens is not very well understood.
This injury causes plaque formation in specific areas of the blood vessels, not throughout their whole length. The majority of the plaque buildup appears to happen around areas where the artery twists or branches. This is believed to occur as a reaction to unstable blood flow due to blood pressure. If the blood flow is altered there is an increase in the pulsing of the blood flow and the pressure is increased. This pressure between circulating blood and the lining of the vessel finally results in the lining becoming disrupted (the injury) and plaque starting to build up.

Another mechanism through which high blood pressure may be involved in heart attacks is through rupture of the plaque. When a plaque builds up inside a vessel, and that vessel has high pressure inside it, pieces of that plaque can break off, or rupture. The rupture of the plaque causes the blood inside that vessel to clot because the body treats this rupture like an injury. This is similar to the clot (scab) that forms when you cut your skin. Because this is happening inside a small vessel, the clot grows and blocks the flow of blood through that vessel. This can result in a heart attack.

When your blood pressure is high, your heart works harder, causing it more stress. In addition, high blood pressure will initially make your heart muscle get thicker as any muscle will do when it is working against high resistance. Take a look at somebody that lifts heavy weights regularly, their muscles are bigger. However, if the high blood pressure is not controlled, the heart will eventually get weak through remodeling of the muscle that grows without appropriate blood flowing to that area.

In general, many symptoms of heart attacks in women are referred to as atypical symptoms. There is nothing atypical about women’s heart attack symptoms other than they are not the symptoms that are typically experienced by men. It’s time that we recognize the differences between women’s and men’s heart health. Women and men with CAD experience different symptoms and are often treated differently and have different outcomes.

Women should look for symptoms of:

  • Shortness of breath at rest or during your everyday activities
  • Abdominal (belly) pressure or discomfort
  • Lower chest discomfort
  • Fatigue
  • Back pain (e.g., pain between your shoulder blades–remember Mrs. N.?)
  • Nausea
  • Other classic or typical warning signs of heart attack that are more often seen in men but can appear in women include a squeezing feeling in the center of the chest that spreads towards the neck, jaw and shoulder, and chest discomfort associated with nausea, fainting, sweating, and shortness of breath.

As you can see, the most common symptoms of CAD in women can be very subtle and can create a confusing picture which may delay an accurate diagnosis. For many women, this results in many and repeated non-heart-related tests before getting to a definitive diagnosis. This can bring along with it increased worry, sadness, and frustration.

You have to be your own advocate! Unless you are paying attention to your symptoms and insist on getting a medical examination, your heart condition can go undiagnosed and, in the worst-case scenario, result in a heart attack.

If you are experiencing any of the symptoms mentioned above don’t hesitate to seek medical attention. If you feel you are not being taken seriously, find another doctor.

Despite the efforts to improve diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in women, we still encounter significant gaps in understanding how the disease starts and progresses, and how to best treat it. As a specialist in the management of heart disease I believe in working to develop the best tools to be able to identify it before it becomes a life-threatening problem, but more so, my philosophy is prevention. Prevention will always be better than treatment.

Heels vs Ties is my initial written effort to spread the word to all women. It is up to us how medical care is going to change in the future. Once you are able to recognize your risk factors and symptoms you can become your own advocate, and on that day you will be working together with many other women in closing the gender gap.

Every woman’s life matters. Some doctors are not aware of the differences, they are not aware of disparities in the care delivered to women (heels) vs. men (ties); or even of the different signs and symptoms of heart disease in women.

With this website I intend to empower you, your daughters, mother, cousins, aunts, neighbors, and friends to take charge of your health and choose life. A healthy life. And I hope it will help you prevent the stent.

Call Now: 352-717-0220

Proactive Healthcare Starts Today

To learn more about why we’re the nation’s leader when it comes to early intervention care, simply contact with our dedicated team today. They’ll guide you through everything you need to know, and will be with you every step of the way.

Preventive Healthcare Starts Today

To learn more about why we’re the nation’s leader when it comes to preventive care, simply contact with our dedicated team today. They’ll guide you through everything you need to know, and will be with you every step of the way.

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