The Truth about Heart Disease in Women

Did you know that heart disease is the number one killer of women? February is Women's Heart Health Awareness Month, so now is a great time to learn the facts and fictions about heart disease in women.

Myth: Heart disease is only a threat to men.

Fact: Heart disease actually strikes more men than women, and is more deadly to women than all forms of cancer combined. Heart disease claims the lives of one in three American women each year.

Myth: Heart disease only affects old people or people who are out of shape.

Fact: Even if you are young, thin and a gym rat, you may still be at risk for heart disease. Heart disease affects women of all ages, though the risks do increase with age. Even if you run marathons, other factors such as high cholesterol, bad eating habits and smoking may counteract your healthy habits. The American Heart Association recommends getting your cholesterol checked starting at age 20, or even earlier if your family has a history of heart disease.

Myth: I’m fine because I don’t have any symptoms.

Fact: Over sixty percent of women who die suddenly of coronary heart disease had no previous symptoms. Because symptoms differ between men and women, they’re often misunderstood. TV shows and movies have taught us that the sign of a heart attack is extreme chest pain. This is not always true, especially for women. Women are more likely to experience shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting and back or jaw pain. Other symptoms you should look out for are dizziness, lightheadedness or fainting, pain in the lower chest or upper abdomen and extreme fatigue. If you experience any of these, seek medical attention immediately.

Myth: Heart disease runs in my family, so there’s nothing I can do about it.

Fact: Although women with a family history of heart disease are at higher risk, there’s plenty they can do to dramatically reduce it. Eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly can keep your heart healthy. Most importantly, women need to be proactive, know their numbers (blood pressure, BMI, blood sugar and cholesterol) and keep them in a healthy range.

Myth: There are many risk factors for heart disease that can’t be changed.

Fact: While some risk factors aren’t modifiable, like age, sex and family history, the majority can be. Lifestyle changes that include quitting smoking, eating better, maintaining a healthy weight and exercising can go a long way to preventing heart disease in women. In fact, more than 670,000 women have been saved from heart disease by making healthy lifestyle changes and being aware of the symptoms.

As you can see, there are many things you can do to help lower your risk of heart disease. One of the best ways to prevent heart disease is to visit your doctor—regular checkups can help catch any problems early.

You can learn more about heart disease and how to prevent it at www.goredforwomen.org

Meet us at the Mount

The following blog post was written by Allison Cohen, Deputy Director of Communications.

People often ask me, “What do you guys do over there at Borough Hall?”

My answer is usually, “How much time do you have?”

I say that as a joke, but the truth is that we work on a breadth of issues, ranging from small quality-of-life problems to larger borough-wide issues. For example, over the past year some of the big topics we’ve worked on include transportation, education, health, substance abuse and economic development.  We also have an entire department devoted to dealing with constituent issues like potholes and litter.

Every day, it feels like we’re tackling a new and important issue, and with people’s increasingly busy schedules, following our office’s progress on different issues might get lost in the shuffle. You can keep up with us all year round through our very active Twitter and Facebook pages, but even the most social media-savvy people are likely to miss a few things. That’s why we’ve put together Direct Connect Sunday, an annual open house to showcase all the projects we’re working on at Borough Hall. Direct Connect is a great way for you to meet the Borough President, talk to our staff and learn about everything our office is doing to improve life on Staten Island.

This year, we’ve decided to take Direct Connect Sunday on the road to Mt. Loretto. We hope you’ll join us on January 29^th from 1:00PM - 4:00PM at the CYO Center at Mt. Loretto, 6451 Hylan Boulevard.

Here are a few of the many things you can look forward to at the event:

1. You will get a chance to learn about all the things we’re working on at Borough Hall. We’ll have displays on all the issues that we’re tackling, big and small, as well as the BP’s plans for the future.
2. Since we’re hosting the event in a larger space, we were able to invite more community organizations and agencies this year. Visitors will be able to meet with over 30 government agencies, nonprofit groups and local attractions to learn about what they are doing on the Island. Sports lovers can visit the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame, located inside the CYO Center, which will also be open during the event.
3. We’re here to take your questions! Our staff will be on hand to discuss specific issues that you need help solving as well as any borough-wide issues you are concerned about.
4. Staten Island University Hospital will sponsor a free naloxone training session at 2pm. Naloxone kits will be distributed to all who participate.
5. There will be other interactive presentations and trainings, including a demonstration of our app, BP Assist, which you can use to submit quality-of-life complaints directly to us.
6. If you’re looking for a quick bite during the event, refreshments will be sold by John’s Catering and Cheech-a-Cini’s food trucks in the parking lot outside the CYO Center.

Need a ride from the North Shore or Mid-Island? We’ll give you a lift! 

The shuttle schedule is as follows:

Leaving Borough Hall – 12:00PM                        Arrive Mount Loretto – 1:00PM

Leave Mount Loretto – 4:00PM                           Arrive Borough Hall – 5:00PM

Leaving Historic Richmondtown – 12:30PM        Arrive Mount Loretto – 1:00PM

Leave Mount Loretto – 4:00PM                           Arrive Historic Richmondtown – 4:30PM

Pick-ups at Richmond Valley Train Station – Intermittently

Drop Off at Train Station – 4:00PM

Please call to reserve your place. Additional shuttle runs will be added as needed, 

courtesy of NY Wheel/Empire Outlets and Historic Richmond Town. 

To reserve a seat, call Diane Marciuliano at 718-816-2246.

We hope to see you there!

The Lifesaving Power of AEDs

I’ve spent much of my career as a strong advocate for automated external defibrillators (AEDs). This started when I was still a City Council staffer in the late 1990’s, and continued after my election to the City Council.  Throughout this process, I got to meet amazing and strong families who have suffered unimaginable losses when their young and seemingly healthy children died after suffering sudden cardiac arrest, people like Rachel Moyer and the Acompora family. These families ultimately turned their grief into action and have dedicated their lives to getting AED’s into more public places. One of my proudest moments as a City Council Member was passing Local Law 20 of 2005, the first law in New York City mandating AED’s in many public places and buildings.    

Unfortunately, most people don’t know much about sudden cardiac arrest, and 64% of Americans have never even seen an AED. We’re hoping to change that through education and getting AEDs in more public places.

Here five things you might not know about sudden cardiac arrest*:

1. Each year in the U.S., there are approximately 424,000 cardiac arrests outside of a hospital setting and on average, just 5.2% of victims survive.
2. Cardiac arrest affects people of all ages, but occurs most commonly in adults with coronary artery disease.
3. Immediate CPR and early defibrillation with an AED can more than double a victim’s chance of survival.
4. Early defibrillation, along with CPR, is the only way to restore the victim’s heart rhythm to normal in a lot of cases of cardiac arrest.
5. For every minute that passes without CPR and defibrillation, the chances of survival decrease by 7–10%.

*Information provided by the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association

As you can see, accessing an AED can be a lifesaving measure in many situations. We want to make sure that as many Staten Islanders as possible have access to AEDs and are trained to use them, which is why we recently launched “The Heart Project,” a donation and training program. My office purchased 20 AEDs from our expense budget to be donated to small businesses and non-profit organizations around the Island. We’ve given out many of them, but there are still nine left that need to be distributed.

If you have a small business on Staten Island with fewer than 25 employees, we invite you to apply to receive an AED. We are asking the recipients to train their employees in CPR/AED, and the Staten Island Heart Society is partnering with us to offer reduced rates for their Heart Saver/AED Certified Class. You can apply for an AED at www.statenislandusa.com/aed

I want to encourage all business owners on Staten Island to purchase their own AEDs and get their employees trained in CPR/AED. It truly can mean the difference between life and death.

Think Little

You demand the best of me from the moment I am sworn into office.   It is right that you should do so.

It is an unspoken and undeniable truth: you demand something in return for giving me your vote and all it implies, and your asking price is that I give 100% of myself to my constituents, which in the case of my current job is the entire borough of Staten Island.  I also know that if I were to let down, if I were to give one iota less than my best, my harshest critic would be the guy I look at in the mirror every morning.

I also know that you would, properly, give me a boot in the ass when the next election cycle rolled around. 

After all, you demand the best I have to give, and I take your demand seriously, as should every elected official at every level of government.  The ones who don’t?  The ones to whom “public service” is an empty moniker, a paycheck with benefits, a means to a self-serving end?  You’ll sniff them out sooner or later; the American voter, the New York voter, the Staten Island voter, is too savvy to be fooled for long.

For my part, I always have – and always will, until I make my exit – looked upon your vote as a contract between two honorable individuals, to be honorably upheld to the best of our ability to do so.  But a contract is, at its heart, an agreed-upon exchange of value.  I readily agree to give what you demand – the totality of my energy and skill – but I am inclined to ask: is your best offer simply an inked circle next to my name on a piece of stiff paper? 

Well, not so fast.   “I will give you the best I have to give” is a promise I make that has real value, something you can take to the bank, and to my way of thinking it’s worth more than just your vote.  I want you to sweeten the deal, so to speak.  

You demand my best?  Then I demand yours.

Here’s what that means: in some way large or small, seen or unseen, you will recognize that although you are an individual answerable only to yourself, you do in fact live with your neighbors, within a community, as part of a town, and you will agree to devote some part of your energies to making things better.  You may think that you already do enough simply by living the life of a responsible adult, but I maintain that no single elected official – or group of them – will ever succeed in making our community all it can be without the cooperation of those folks who have put him or her in office.  And so I ask you to do a little more.

In a book of essays called “The Art of the Commonplace,” Wendell Berry says it better than I ever could:

“While the government is studying and funding and organizing its Big Thought…the citizen who is willing to Think Little, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem.  A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it - he is doing that work...”

“It takes a village,” said someone, some time ago.  I have never been a fan of the phrase, nor of the collectivism it implies.  I believe that the most basic component of American society is the individual, free to pursue his or her own aims, goals or desires.  But I do recognize and believe that individuals will, for their own self-interest, sooner or later form a village, and recognize as well that the village has needs that can only be met when many individuals agree that working to benefit the group is, in fact, working to benefit themselves.

Here’s another quote: “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”  It’s a Middle Eastern phrase that has stuck with me over the years.  It means, as I interpret it, that those who never constructively engage with their community, a community in constant search of a better life, are relegated to offering nothing but yelps and snarls from the side of the road.  But they effect no change; they are barely heard.  The caravan moves on without them.

So here’s what I’m asking: volunteer to take on a responsibility beyond the personal one; figure out a way to give to the community something more than simply condemning government in your medium of choice, be it print or digital.  Criticism from those within the caravan is welcome, but from the unengaged?  As I said: the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

If I can get you to pick up a piece of litter and drop it in a can, I have not written this for nothing.  If you will engage your neighbors to discuss a solution to something that’s been bugging your community, I won’t have wasted 900 words.  Things as simple as that – or a thousand other things I could list if I had the time or space – is the tiny price of admission to the caravan.

We are, you and I, honorable individuals.  You demand the best of me; now I demand the best of you.

Let’s shake on it.

[NOTE:  Anyone’s who’s been following current events these days has seen the accusation of plagiarism thrown around quite a bit.  I mention it because one of the quotes in this blog piece was used in a column this morning by the Post’s Michael Goodwin.  “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on…” is an old, but scantily used, proverb.  I guess it gained prominence when used by Truman Capote, who poached part of it as the title his book “The Dogs Bark,” a collection of his essays published back in 1973.

Anyway, this blog post has been in the queue for some months now; I just wanted to let you know before I was unfairly accused of plagiarism. J  These days demand such transparency – and that’s not a bad thing.]

On Resolutions and Goals...

The following blog post was written by Chris DeCicco, Counselor to the Borough President.

If it seems that the word “resolution” is used only during that two or three week period straddling the holiday season, it’s probably because it’s true.

The dictionary definition of the word is “a serious decision to do something,” and at its root is the Latin verb “resolvere,” which generally means to “loosen, undo, or settle.”  When we use it in relation to the New Year, it means an individual has settled in his or her mind to act - or not act, as the case may be - on something during the upcoming year.

Although it is by definition a serious decision, we have all unfortunately learned through experience that resolutions usually fail.  We sooner-or-later come to a realization that what seemed like a good plan on December 30 or January 3 is really more-than-difficult to achieve, and usually involves substantial work and sacrifice.  That is why the overcrowded gyms of January inevitably regress to the point where by spring you can step onto any one of a dozen treadmills at any time of any day. 

Yet, the decision to use a milestone like the first day of the year to help us make decisions about the future is an important one, because those decisions are the result of serious self-reflection.  It is a time when we look back with objectivity and identify our shortcomings and weaknesses, and look forward with hope and a resolve to do better next year.

Personally, I don’t like to make resolutions. When I think of the term, I’m reminded of the great Puritan Jonathan Edwards who, as a young man around 1722, drew up a list of 70 resolutions on how he would live his life and serve his God.  Here’s an example of one of Edwards’ formal resolutions:  “Resolved, To ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better.”

Reading Edwards’ resolutions, and reflecting on how seriously he took them, makes some of our modern day resolutions look trifling in comparison.  This type of resolution-making is a trap into which we are destined to fall, and leads to self-flagellation occasioned by our inevitable failure to keep them.

I’d rather set simple goals for the New Year, which is, after all, an arbitrary but convenient place to begin pursuing them. 

I have always been a voracious reader.  I can remember staying up all night when I was a kid reading through an encyclopedia that was about ten years out of date. This love of reading, particularly non-fiction, has stayed with me throughout my life, and I recently realized that I don’t do nearly enough of it these days. 

The distractions of electronic devices are a big culprit. In the past I would sit on the couch or flop into an easy chair and read a book.  Now, it is easier to read an article or scroll through Twitter on my phone. It is for this reason that e-books just haven’t worked out well for me: the lure of other content on my web-connected iPad, time and time again, proves to be too strong to resist. 

Another reason is simply the fact that I am simply too busy doing my job; it is easier to unwind by doing something that doesn’t require much thinking.

A third reason is that my young children require – and deserve - a great deal of attention, and it is hard to delve into a good book when you are constantly distracted.

But when I dig deep, my reflections on the past year lead me to but one conclusion: I am just making excuses. My goal, then – not my resolution - is to read more in the coming year.  Maybe I won’t read as much as I used to, but I will stop making excuses. I won’t be dogmatic about this and beat myself up if I don’t read as much as I think I should: when life gets in the way, I will let life win out.

But I will try. I have chosen the books I want to read - or re-read - and have already begun. Of course, the distractions life throws my way means that I might still be reading this same book come springtime, but I will keep reading – because that is the goal I have set for myself.  If I had, instead, made this a “resolution” I think it’s clear I would be setting myself up for failure. 

So it’s a goal.

I will leave the significant resolutions to people like Edwards for now, and focus this year on achieving small victories if I can, when I can, and as I can.  So maybe, at this time next year, I will be able to look back with pride and see achievement, and leave disappointment to the resolution-makers.

Happy New Year to all.