 Welcome to Ola Houston a public affairs program addressing issues of interest to Houston's Hispanic community First some very important health information, especially for Latina So listen up. You may not know this but heart disease is the number one killer of Hispanic women and Latinas tend to develop heart disease Earlier than their non-Hispanic Caucasian counterparts. What's the reason for this and what can we do about it? Well here with some insight we have Dr. Silva an interventional cardiologist with the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital Thanks so much for joining us this morning. My pleasure. First of all Why don't you just talk to us about heart disease and and how it correlates with the Hispanic community? The correlation is very direct heart disease is a consequence of Some risk factors such as diabetes being overweight being inactive Smoking and having high cholesterol and hypertension and that's quite prevalence prevalent in the Hispanic community Why is it so much in the Hispanic community? Out of the rest. That's a very good question maybe because of the diet very rich in carbohydrates and There is a very high incidence of diabetes in the Hispanic community and sometimes Hispanics go Too far beyond the point they since diabetes is most of the times asymptomatic people don't feel anything They develop it and they continue the disease progresses without being attended for how about particularly in women Are you seeing it more in the Hispanic women than the Hispanic male? Absolutely? Hispanic women are a very difficult group to Attentive because the problem with women in general is that their symptoms are not as clear as in men So sometimes women don't pay attention to their symptoms because they're used to taking care of other people taking care of the kids They can care of the husband And they don't pay attention to no chest is gone for chest pain chest pressure shortness of breath when they walk or Even sometimes a little stabbing pain in their chest or in the back all of this could represent heart disease in women And are some of those symptoms different? between men and women will they You know feel things differently in their body I know a lot of people talk about the numbness in the left arm or the right arm. Is it same for the bowl? It's the same for both if you're having but the problem with women is that they usually don't have The typical symptoms which is the elephant sitting on your chest with radiation to the left side here with numbness in the left arm Women have what more what we call atypical symptoms They also have the chest pain and numbness sometimes But most of the times they have just a twitching in the chest or some shortness of breath when they pick up the kid And so women need to be more attentive Through the symptoms because most of the times they don't have the quote-unquote typical Angina, which is you know your heart pain and it's also important to know that some doctors especially and fortunately primary care physician doctors are not as aware of Of that as cardiologists, which are specialists are more aware of this characteristic of pain in women And so would you say doctor when you see some of these patients for some of them? It might be too late or how does that work? Absolutely Unfortunately, and that's that's very very common with Hispanic women and men Like I said before they develop diabetes and they don't they don't attend to the disease and then things progress Far beyond what we can fix How about the family history some people don't go to the doctor because they say well it doesn't run in my family But what if it does if it does it's even worse So family history can can function not only for heart disease and heart attacks But also for family history of high cholesterol or family history of high blood pressure All those things run in families and high cholesterol and high blood pressure actually cause heart disease So if even if you don't have a history of quote-unquote Heart attacks or heart disease in your family if you do have a history of high cholesterol and high blood pressure You need to be checked How do you know if you have heart disease because I know in many cases some people will feel bad one day They feel good the next and then maybe a week later they feel bad and it's one of those things They don't go to the doctor because in that instance, they're feeling great. Yes The symptoms of heart disease can be very deceiving. You're absolutely right Most of the times what you need to do is you need to see your doctor and have what's called the treadmill stress test And maybe an ultrasound of your heart to make that diagnosis of the presence of heart disease But you again, you should not discount your symptoms and can you give the folks who are watching this some advice? I know you talked about that Hispanic diet. Is there anything that we can do to curb that? Yes, for example, you can make food choices that will reflect in your future health such as change from flour tortillas to corn tortillas Privilege the use of chicken and fish instead of pork and absolutely cut back on the fried food Anything else that you feel that our viewers should know about this this very important issue This is a key issue in the United States the Hispanic community is usually not attended to Unfortunately and Hispanics need to pay attention to heart disease more than cancer for example Okay Well, we are gonna get some information up for our viewers just in case they want some more information We definitely want them to turn to the experts. Can you give us that website there is that without the dot? Texas heart or G and you have a full Gamma of information for heart disease in that website perfect. Okay, good stuff. Thanks so much doctor for joining us. It's my pleasure. I really appreciate it Thank you