Celebrate National Wear Red Day

By , SparkPeople Blogger
This Friday, February 6, marks the National Wear Red Day, when everyone across the country is asked to wear red in support of raising awareness of the number one killer of American women: heart disease. Held the first Friday in February since 2002, the Wear Red Day campaign has been gaining momentum and helping educate women on cardiovascular disease awareness.

Each year, more than 500,000, or roughly 1 in 4 women, or one woman every minute, will succumb to heart disease. And of that number, more than half will die from heart attacks. While heart disease afflicts six times the number of women diagnosed every year with breast cancer, surveys have shown that women fear breast cancer far more so than heart disease. This is one reason why the National Wear Red Day is paramount if we want to change the path on which we, as women, are headed. Sadly, many times a woman’s first experience with heart disease is often her last as many women tend to ignore the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and/or heart disease until it is too late.

So what can do in order to bring this extremely important issue to the forefront of your own community?

  • First of all, please visit The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's (NHLBI) website for more information on their The Heart Truth campaign. This is one of many organizations sponsoring events not just on Friday, but for the entire month of February, to help better educate not only women, but everyone, as to the importance in raising awareness of this often deadly but very treatable disease.
     
  • Consider becoming The Heart Truth coordinator for your company by asking your fellow employees to wear red this Friday. Nothing sends a more impacting and powerful message then to walk in an office with all the employees wearing a common color. And if you can, take time to discuss the importance for all women to talk with their health care providers on the importance regarding their heart health, especially if these women have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, or diabetes.
     
  • Consider bringing The Heart Truth Campaign to your women’s groups. Book clubs, garden clubs, and church groups all share a common bond, and when we share the need to keep healthy and the need to follow up with our doctors, we just may save a friend’s life.
     
  • Teachers may want to share with their students the risk factors for heart disease by discussing with them the importance of not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, getting in some good exercise every day, and following a healthy, nutritious diet.

    • Education, by far is one of the most important steps we can take to turn the tide on this disease. By educating one person, and then another, and then another, it is only a matter of time for us to push heart disease out of the number one slot so that we can all see our grandmothers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, aunts, nieces, friends, and yes, even ourselves, live well into the golden years without the threat of heart disease looming over our heads.

    How do you plan on celebrating National Wear Red Day this Friday? Would you consider leading a campaign for your workplace, school, or woman’s groups?