Heart disease claims the lives of more women in America than any other illness, and as awareness of this fact increases, many women are beginning to fight back against this quiet killer.
Matt Hooper, communications director at the Birmingham American Heart Association, said many women are uninformed about the seriousness of the issue.
"If you added up the women who have died as a result of any cancer over the past year, it would not equal the number of women who have died as a result of heart disease," Hooper said.
Hooper said in 2004-05, one in eight women knew the facts about heart disease. Now, the statistic is one in six.
The disease does not target a certain age group, Hooper said.
"It's not an old person's disease," he said. "It's a disease that can really strike even if you're young and you think you're healthy."
Simple preventative steps can greatly reduce a woman's risk.
Among the most important, Hooper said, are that women should stop smoking, visit a doctor for a personal checkup, eat better and exercise.
He especially stressed regular visits to the docor.
"We call it, 'know your numbers,'" Hooper said. "Know what your cholesterol is. Know what your blood sugar is. Know what your blood pressure is."
Exercise and diet also play a key role in preventing heart disease.
"If you substitute one healthy item in your diet in place of something that's unhealthy, you're going to help your cardiovascular system," Hooper said. "Chances are you're gonna add years to your life."
Stephanie Irvin, doctoral student in biology, said being proactive is the second step after awareness.
"It's something that requires active monitoring and maintenance," Irvin said.
She said many students may be oblivious to how current choices they make will affect them later.
"... You're young, you're healthy, you're fit and you're having fun. And you don't think about, 'Well, how's the lifestyle I live now going to impact my life 20, 30 years down the road?'" Irvin said.
The here and now often outweighs the future, she said.
"You aren't looking ahead; you're looking ahead to, 'When's my next test? When's my next date? What's the next big social activity in my life?' Not, 'What's my health gonna be in 20 years?'" Irvin said.
Michelle Lolley, sophomore in communication, said she likes to work out and eat healthy to reduce stress.
"I'm a huge health nut," Lolley said. "I go to the gym. When I don't have time, I still work out at my house."
Lolley said she becomes tired and weak when she doesn't keep up with healthy habits.
"I think a lot of people develop bad habits in college because you're just on a really tight budget and a really strict schedule and everyone gets stressed out," Lolley said, "and you eat because you're bored, you eat because you're stressed."
However, Lolley said the alternative is not as difficult as some may think.
"It's really not hard or expensive to eat healthy if you do it right," she said.
Irvin said she thinks more women are suffering from heart disease mainly because of a focus on other areas.
"Not for us as students, but for ... moms ... they put themselves last," Irvin said. "So they're more concerned about their kids' health and their partner's health and less about their health."
The American Heart Association has noticed the same thing, Hooper said.
"One thing that we have discovered in research: women tend to ignore their symptoms more than men do," Hooper said.
Research shows women are often focused more on others, he said.
"That can be for a variety of factors. They're busy, they've got other people to take care of in the house ... they feel like maybe the last person they need to take care of is themselves," Hooper said.
Hooper urged women to know their body.
"You know when there's something wrong," Hooper said. "You know that there's a pain in your chest that you can't identify or you feel nauseated or you feel unusually tired."
Hopper said heart disease does affect women differently than men, but if more women are affected is still to be determined.
"But we do think that there's a correlation between women perhaps focusing more on other people and not necessarily on themselves that makes it seem like women are being affected more than men are," he said.
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