7 Women Share The Heart Issues They Never Thought They'd Have To Deal With Before 35

womenshealthmag.com - You're young, you're healthy, you probably don't need to worry about your heart, right? Wrong, says Suzanne Steinbaum, a cardiologist and spokesperson for the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women campaign. "If you have a heart, you can get heart disease," she says. "It's not just something that affects old people and men." In fact, heart disease is the number-one killer of women, accounting for one in three deaths each year, according to the AHA. The difference between you and your 70-year-old neighbor, however, is the type of heart problems each of you is most at risk for. The most prevalent conditions in young women are congenital heart abnormalities, meaning you're just born with them, like a mitral valve prolapse, or genetic problems, Steinbaum says. About five out of every 500 female babies are born with heart defect, according to the AHA.

Your youth also doesn't excuse you from more "traditional" heart issues like heart attacks, clogged arteries, and strokes. Your set of personal risk factors, which include family history, lifestyle factors, and medical history, in addition to age, can give you a better idea of how worried you should be about your heart. For instance, the combo of birth control pills and smoking—both common in younger women—can up your risk of a heart attack by 20 percent, the AHA says.

Better Nutrition for Women and Girls Is Crucial to Achieve the SDGs

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Steve Godfrey

The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals make up an ambitious new agenda. But Steve Godfrey of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition writes that unless there is investment in improving the nutritional health of women and girls, many of the goals will never be realized.

The Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals adopted last year during the 70th U.N. General Assembly set a new course for nutrition and human development. For the first time, the international community is committed to “ending malnutrition in all its forms,” as opposed to “halving” malnutrition, as stated in the Millennium Development Goals. This means that we have the opportunity to improve the health and lives of an estimated 800 million people who remain undernourished and of the billions of people who suffer from micronutrient deficiencies or obesity. It is a radical new agenda.

Women and young children are often those most affected by the negative consequences of undernutrition. Around half of all pregnant women in developing countries are anemic, which contributes up to 20 percent of all maternal deaths. In many developing countries, women and girls traditionally eat last and have lower quality food, which often leads to poorer nutritional intake. And when a crisis hits, women are generally the first to sacrifice their food consumption to protect the health of their families.

Women account for over 40 percent of the world’s labor force. Yet malnutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies, can diminish women’s earning power through low energy levels, illness and increased absence from work. It is estimated that tackling anemia alone could lead to increased productivity of up to 17 percent.

Moreover, many adverse health outcomes associated with malnutrition are determined by the health and nutritional status of women and adolescent girls. Without the proper nutrients from pregnancy through to the age of 2 – the critical 1,000 days – infants suffer long-term health and economic consequences. Poor nutrition before and during pregnancy is a major determinant of stunting – meaning that a child does not reach its full potential height – which also has lifelong effects on physical and mental development. Currently, a little less than 160 million children are stunted globally.

At the same time, women are leaders in the fight against malnutrition. First, supporting women to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of a child’s life, and to continue breastfeeding along with adequate complementary foods until at least age 2, is the best nutrition intervention for mothers and their babies. Breast milk provides the essential nutrients needed for healthy development, as well as the antibodies that help protect infants from common childhood illnesses such as diarrhea and pneumonia, the two primary causes of child mortality worldwide. Exclusive breastfeeding, where this is possible, is also beneficial to the mother and is known to reduce risks of breast and ovarian cancer later in life.

Second, women are the world’s primary food producers. Giving women farmers more resources could bring the number of hungry people in the world down by 100-150 million people. What’s more, when women have greater control over household income, they are more likely to prioritize spending on nutritious foods, improving nutrition for the entire family.

Finally, focusing on women’s empowerment is considered to be one of the best ways to improve nutrition. Education is a proven and important means of achieving gender equality, the effects of which are felt throughout families and communities. This includes better nutritional outcomes. A 2011 hunger and malnutrition report estimated that mothers with 10 or more years of education were less likely to have underweight or stunted children. Educating girls not only increases their earning potential, but may also delay the age of marriage and childbearing, which has a positive impact on childhood stunting.

Although the numerous links between empowering women and improving nutrition are understood, more still needs to be done to address the specific nutritional problems of women, adolescent girls and young children. The barriers for women in accessing nutritious diets are numerous and encompass the cost and availability of healthy foods, knowledge about nutrition, as well as the social, cultural and regulatory barriers that shape behaviors and markets.

Over the last nine years, GAIN has been working with our partners through a combination of proven interventions – such as the protection and promotion of breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding – and novel approaches to promote nutrition-related behaviors.

For example, a program in East Java, Indonesia, in partnership with the Ministry of Health’s Directorate of Community Nutrition, seeks to improve the dietary practices of pregnant mothers and children under the age of 2 years. Understanding what influences women when feeding their children and the barriers they face has been crucial to developing motivational messages that empower women to make healthy choices. We found that the whole community – members, friends and neighbors – needs to be involved, as everyone plays a big role in determining the choices that mothers make about what they and their children eat. One major component of the program is a behavior change campaign called Rumpi Sehat (Health Gossip), which comprises of national TV ads; “Emo-Demos” (emotional demonstrations), community activation designed to provoke an emotional response; social media; and interpersonal communication.

Another example is our project in rural Rajasthan, India, where women’s groups have been trained to produce fortified blended foods. These foods are purchased by the state’s social welfare program, which then distributes take-home rations to mothers and children. This project is giving tens of thousands of women access to nutritious complementary foods for their babies, aged 6 to 23 months, which are needed in addition to breastmilk. Currently, similar women’s groups are being set up in the Indian states of Karnataka and Bihar.

Adequate nutrition is important for women not only because it helps them be productive members of society, but also because of the direct effect maternal nutrition has on the health and development of the next generation. Maternal malnutrition’s toll on maternal and infant survival prevents countries from achieving most of the Sustainable Development Goals. While there is no silver bullet or single model to follow, putting women and children at the heart of tackling malnutrition is the right thing to do, a core investment for the success of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Women & Girls Hub.

Blind Bias: Why More Women Suffer From Preventable Vision Disabilities

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Christine Chung

As the health community marks World Sight Day, women from low- or middle-income countries still make up two-thirds of blind people around the globe – and most of them have a condition that can be cured or prevented.

There are 39 million blind people across the world, and a further 246 million suffering from low vision, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Almost two-thirds are women, the vast majority of them living in low- or middle-income countries.

The WHO says 80 percent of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured with solutions that are relatively easy and low-cost. For example, cataracts, which account for more than half of all cases of blindness, can usually be treated with a 15-minute operation to insert a $2 intraocular lens. But for many blind women, cost is only one of several barriers to diagnosis and treatment.

There is no biological reason for the increased prevalence of vision impairment in women, according to research by the Seva Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that provides eye-care services in over 20 countries. But access to eye healthcare is a major factor.

“In many cultures and regions, within families and the context of communities, blind and vision-impaired women are not considered as important as men to get services,” says Johannes Trimmel, advocacy director of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). “It’s a question of financing and cost recovery where investment in families is rather going to men and to the younger generation than to women and the older generation.”

Even where surgery is offered for free, getting to the clinics is often a challenge for many vision-impaired women, as is having the information to know that services are available and that their disability is treatable. The Gender and Blindness Initiative, launched in 1983 by the Canadian Global Health Research Initiative, found that the utilization of eye-care services is strongly associated with the socioeconomic status of women and female literacy – an indicator of educational attainment. Highlighting examples from southern India, the Seva Foundation report Gender and Blindness shows that investment in female education improves all aspects of public health, including eye care, and often without having to add to existing health services.

In low-income settings, blindness or low vision can be a disability with severe consequences. In many parts of the world, people who become blind experience a diminishing quality of life, with the loss of independence, mobility and productivity as well as social status and self-esteem. And their families are likewise negatively affected. According to a Nepali proverb, a blind person is a mouth with no hands – someone who needs so much help in their daily lives that their sighted caregiver loses education and employment opportunities.

Despite the potentially massive economic, psychological and social costs of blindness, all eye-care services are reaching only 10 percent of people who need them, says Suzanne Gilbert, Seva Foundation’s cofounder and senior director of Innovations and Sight.

“If you design programs that are inclusive of women, it’s likely to serve everyone who needs them,” she says. “Figuring out how to reach women requires attention to location, affordability – often meaning it has to be free – and quality of care, not just the outcome but also during the process. Are the patients being rushed? Ignored? Or are they being listened to?”

Compounding the impact of gender prejudice in access to healthcare is age discrimination. Over 80 percent of blind people are aged 50 and above. Vision impairment often appears later in life, and in many contexts is accepted as an inevitable part of aging, even when there are solutions. And that discrimination isn’t just about cultural attitudes and the allocation of health resources, it’s present even in the process of data collection. Organizations tracking women’s health stop when the women reach the end of their fertility: Women over 49 years old are ignored in the Demographic and Health Survey and UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey.

“Not being counted in statistics and survey means a denial of and exclusion from information, and prevention and support services,” said Justin Derbyshire, CEO of HelpAge International, a network of organizations working with and for older people, in a recent speech to the WHO.

And then there is the fact that, in many countries, funding is often directed toward health issues that are considered more urgent than loss of vision. As far back as the 1980s, the World Bank identified cataract surgery as one of the most cost-effective interventions that can be offered in low- and middle-income countries. But it also notes that these countries face competing health demands like maternal and child care.

With global demographic trends pointing to progressive and rapid population aging, preventable and treatable blindness will only grow as a pressing health and human rights concern. “We have been working on establishing community-based eye care that can reach all who need it,” says Gilbert. “The key factor is not to approach this as a charity, but to provide quality eye-care services for those who are able to pay, and subsidize those who can’t.”

Later this month, IAPB will hold its general assembly, which takes place every four years. Trimmel hopes it will provide an opportunity to address head-on the barriers that women face. “It’s not just the ophthalmologists, it’s not just the service centers, the community health workers, the people working on education or equality generally,” he says. “It needs structures and people to work well together for women to have equal access to eye care.”

Anjali Sarker: Girls Have to ‘Break the Barriers in Ourselves’

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Hannah McNeish

From cultural curse to social entrepreneur, Bangladeshi innovator Anjali Sarker is determined to cut through caste and gender to allow people at “the bottom of the pyramid” to rise to their potential.

Anjali Sarker remembers her seventh birthday well, because it was the day her parents brought home the best present possible – a baby sister who she decided was “a little angel.” But Sarker’s delight soon turned to distress when she overheard an uncle giving his condolences to her father about the birth of this “curse” – another girl instead of a treasured boy.

As she got older, Sarker used her uncle’s comment to drive her determination to enter the male-dominated world of business. She lobbied her parents to let her attend Bangladesh’s top business school, despite their pleas for her to follow the path most parents wanted for their girls, becoming a nurse or primary-school teacher.

But Sarker persisted and by the age of 20, she had been featured in Forbes magazine for one of her innovations: Toilet+, a startup that installs eco toilets in the homes of the rural poor and pays people for the solid waste they collect. In a country where many children die of diarrheal diseases, Sarker knew that encouraging more hygienic toilet habits could save lives.

Since then, she’s been collecting accolades and awards for her work with social businesses and she’s currently a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum. She has channeled her dislike of hierarchies into a youth news network, Campus2Career, aimed at students who struggle to find business news and career advice beyond the civil service. And for her day job, she is team leader at BRAC, managing other young innovators.

Women & Girls Hub caught up with Sarker in Nairobi, where she was speaking as an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, to ask her about breaking down prejudices and breaking up all-male panels at conferences.

Women & Girls Hub: What were some of the challenges you faced getting to where you are today?

Anjali Sarker: When I was working in my enterprise, I had to tell my parents, “I’m not working on anything, it’s just my university assignments,” when in reality I had to go to places.

When I was meeting the investors, they asked me the same questions, in a very derogatory manner. They were like, “You are 20 and you are asking for money – do you even have a bank account?” If you want to discriminate [against] a woman, you can find a hundred reasons to stop her from doing what she’s doing.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you overcome the prejudices you mentioned in Bangladeshi society, such as people judging you by your age, gender and social status?

Sarker: You need to have a strategy. From a very young age, my father taught me how to play chase and even though I’m a grown-up and I don’t play chase anymore, I really cherish the idea that it’s a game. If somehow plan A fails, you have plan B and you execute that. That’s how I save myself from frustrations.

Women & Girls Hub: Do you get a lot of emails or calls from girls wanting to know how you cracked the business world?

Sarker: It’s a super-funny question because I get more messages from men, who say, “I‘m very inspired and you’re so articulate. How can I be like you?” And I say: I wish more girls said this!

When you speak at conferences, you see only 20 percent of the audience are girls and the rest are men. No wonder I’m getting more messages from the men. The girls are still inside their houses. So it’s the boys who do the projects, who go outside, who take part in different things.

It’s not in our blood that we have to stay inside the house, but it’s the culture. It’s very linear: You be a good girl. You get married. You have a family. Those are the success metrics for women. I haven’t seen anyone telling a girl child, “You have to earn money, you have to be independent.” Rather, the mother tells the girl, “Buy this dress, make sure your makeup is perfect.” No one is telling that to a boy, so a boy is thinking of how to progress in his career.

Women & Girls Hub: How do you see things changing for the younger generation?

Sarker: If I think about my mother, she never traveled abroad. She just stayed in the same job. I will not do that. It’s changing gradually. Now girls and women have a lot more options. They’re doing more. They’re coming out of their houses. Progress is slow but it’s happening.

Women & Girls Hub: And you’re breaking up “manels”?

Sarker: Yes, I hate those! I organize a conference on innovation every year, and this is my biggest pain and my biggest pleasure – that I ensure there will be no panel without a woman. I try to ensure that it’s 50/50, if not 60/40, but at least one woman.

Women & Girls Hub: What is the idea behind Campus2Career?

Sarker: It’s a new portal for the youth across the country, but it’s not for the elite universities. It talks about a lot of different youth news issues and helps young people make the smooth transition from student life to career opportunities. We are trying to promote non-traditional professions to them, telling them they don’t have to only run after government jobs. They can do entrepreneurship; they can be a sportsperson if they want to. They don’t have to study economics or business or the most sought-after subjects, but they can study literature and be a journalist.

These people feel they don’t have options, because no one has ever told them they do. People who are studying in top universities; they know how to find information from Harvard Business Review. A person hundreds of miles from the capital doesn’t know enough English to use Google and find that. So we are really making things simple for them, in our native Bangla – we don’t use English. We are really focusing on the bottom of the pyramid and seeing how we can give them the most useful information possible.

Women & Girls Hub: What do you say to other girls who want to get into business and are being told they can’t?

Sarker: Don’t be afraid. Once we get the courage to do it, we can do it all. My organs have nothing to do with business, so whatever a man can do, I can do that, too. But all the difference is in our mindset: that I think a man will do better than me, so I stand back. I think before breaking the other barriers, the institutional ones, and talking to other people, we have to break the barriers in ourselves.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

5 Proven Reasons Feminism Is Great For Your Health

We all know that caring about women's rights is important—for everyone. Fighting for equality through advocating for women's rights ends up improving the lives of women as well as entire societies, and everyone wins. But did you know the feminist lifestyle is good for your health? Bustle.com covers five ways feminist habits and outlooks are correlated with physical and mental health. bustle.com - Feminism is awesome. It fights long-entrenched gender inequalities based on the really fundamental belief that women deserve the same economic, social and educational privileges as men. (Not that hard, really.) There are a lot of undeniable plus-sides to being a feminist, from standing up for your fellow women to being on the right side of history, but science is also finding that feminism and the equality it creates can have some serious health benefits, too. Quoting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie can make us healthier? Sweet, let's get campaigning!

There are several relationships between feminist thinking and better health outcomes. One is that of consequences: better equality, for instance, leads to more wealth for women, which tends to lead to more access to healthcare, more educated decisions about childbearing, and other health-positive stuff. Another is a bit more direct: it seems that thinking like a feminist seems to have genuine positive psychological benefits for our mental health. And then there's the health benefit of having a medical system that takes women's pain seriously, which is definitely a feminist issue.

Here are five different ways in which being a feminist will boost your mental and physical health, from the more abstract to the tangible. A dose of feminism may keep the doctor away more effectively than any old apple.

Read the list here.

Women in the Armed Forces: Where Can We Go from Here?

Women have joined men in the Armed Forces in increasing numbers in recent years, and even most combat positions are now open to men and women. Military service, long thought of as a men-focused issue, is now bolstered by—and seeking to accommodate—women. Veteran Dustin DeMoss writes on Huffpost Women about issues including increasing numbers of women veterans, higher risk of suicide among women veterans than among women in general, and recent studies and efforts to help work toward a brighter future for women in the Armed Forces. Read an excerpt below, and click through for the full column.  huffingtonpost.com - While women in the armed forces aren’t necessarily a new concept, there is no denying that the ranks of female soldiers are growing at a rapid pace. Their increased presence and demand is reflected in some of the more recent announcements coming out of the Department of Defense. Most notably, Ash Carter, Defense Secretary, announced on December 3, 2015, that all positions and occupations within the military are now open to women.

You might be a bit confused by that announcement - after all, women were already serving in the military, right? Defense Secretary Carter’s announcement is significant because it officially “opens” up the nearly 220,000 positions in the military that were previously closed to women. These include positions like reconnaissance, special operations units, and infantry. According to the announcement, women are no longer to be pushed back from the front lines - not to say that plenty of women haven’t served on them, of course, but rather that the knee-jerk reaction seemed to favor keeping them away persistent and close combat situations.

Today, women have the same shot at high-ranking and heavily specialized positions as their male counterparts.

Read the rest here.