by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

October 30, 2008

As concerned as she is with the health of the economy, bank executive Maxine Levy has another concern close to her heart — the health of women’s hearts.

Having nearly died from a heart attack 13 years ago at the age of 41, the Springfield mother of two, first vice president of the Manhattan branch of an Israeli bank, has made saving others a priority. In these times of heightened stress, she sees an even greater need to emphasize preventive measures.

Just in from her regular four-mile-plus Sunday walk, Levy and her friend and co-heart health campaigner, Suzanne Banfield of Basking Ridge, sat down to discuss the subject over a lunch — of salad.

The two women met in 2002 when Banfield, recovering from heart surgery herself, walked past the information table at Morristown Memorial Hospital, where Levy was handing out literature from the lay-led advocacy organization WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.

Banfield is now the north Jersey support coordinator for the organization, and coauthor of its new book of heart-healthy recipes, WomenHeart’s All Heart Family Cookbook.

Although October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Levy said she also hopes women focus on another potential killer.

“It’s great that they’re doing this; obviously, it’s really important,” she said of cancer awareness. “But people don’t realize that heart disease is an even bigger problem than breast cancer.”

According to the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, heart disease is the number one cause of death in women in the United States. More women than men die after their first heart attack — possibly because of lack of appropriate treatment. And though more women than men die of heart disease, they receive about one third of the surgeries done to treat the disease.

Even these days, Levy said, many women emerge from heart surgery without being prescribed preventive medications, like aspirin or beta blockers, or physio- or psychotherapy.

Why these facts gets so little air time is a question that stumps Levy and Banfield. Where many men in the public eye — President Bill Clinton and Vice President Dick Cheney, for example — are known to have heart disease, few high-profile women ever publicize the fact that they too might be members of “the zipper club.” Banfield suggested that having such a scar down the chest strikes too close to what they regard as their emotional as well as physical core.

Statistics come easily to these two women: Levy has a master’s degree in business administration, and Banfield has a master’s in food and nutrition and a doctorate in organization development.

They point out that for much-debated reasons, Israeli researchers have found lower heart disease rates among fervently Orthodox women than among the less observant. “It might be because so few of them smoke,” Banfield said.

They don’t have the figures for Jewish women in general, but both said that in their own view of the problem, Jewish women seem over-represented. They named one coalition member after the other who is Jewish.

Banfield’s cookbook co-author, Kathy Kastan, past president of WomenHeart, told Jewish Woman magazine that she thinks Jewish women, with their reputation as “family caretakers par excellence,” take on particularly heavy stress.

Providing traditional foods can be a problem too, though Kastan — like Banfield — insists that there are healthy and equally delicious alternatives.

“We’re not talking about chopped liver, of course,” Kastan said. “That can never be on a heart-healthy diet, but if you like it, have a little bit.”

She added that spiritual support, and doing good — tikun olam, efforts to repair the world —help ease stress.

The thing with heart disease, Levy and Banfield said, is that unlike with breast cancer, there are clear-cut causes, effective treatments, and effective methods to avoid it or lessen its impact.

“Wouldn’t you think that would make people more willing to pay attention to it?” Levy asked. “Or maybe that is precisely why they don’t want to think about it.”

“It could be a matter of control,” Banfield said. Some women are exhilarated by the idea of taking responsibility for their health; others are appalled by the idea of challenging their doctors. But WomanHeart is all about empowering women with support and information.

‘I felt alone’

When Levy had her heart attack in 1995, she was totally baffled. At first, she and her Israeli husband, Jacob, thought her middle-of-the-night nausea and agonizing back pain was probably from food poisoning, but then she remembered something that probably saved her life: Many years before, her aunt experienced similar symptoms when she had a heart attack.

Levy and her family lived in Elizabeth at the time, and she was taken by ambulance to Elizabeth General and then transferred to Morristown Memorial. Even her doctors were taken aback that a woman, and one that young, had had a heart attack. The woman cardiologist in Morristown demanded that she confess what drugs she had been taking that must have triggered the attack.

“I told her I wasn’t taking any drugs at all,” Levy said. “Eventually, in her way, she kind of apologized.”

In the aftermath of the attack, Levy said, she found herself at sea, with little information or help available. “I felt very alone. I thought, ‘What do I do now?’” It was a huge relief to her four years later when she came across the website for the newly established WomenHeart coalition.

Banfield was 52 in 2002 when a totally routine health check-up revealed that she had a 95 percent blockage of the carotid artery.

“If it wasn’t for that check-up — if they hadn’t operated — I would probably have been dead within six months,” she said. When she went to a support group afterward, all the other patients were men 20 or 30 years older than she.

In the past few years, things have changed at Morristown Memorial, where Banfield also was treated. A new section, the Gagnon Cardiovascular Institute, is due to open on the hospital campus next January.

Institute chair Dr. Frank Smart said that regarding awareness among doctors and women patients, “things are getting better, but they’re not good enough yet.” When a man has a fleeting chest pain, the immediate response is to have his heart checked; when a woman has a similar symptom, they first consider all kinds of other causes.

Already, through the integrative medicine program, therapists are offering various forms of movement and meditation. For some, when they come around from surgery, there is a harpist playing music in the room.

Elizabeth Newell, the hospital’s manager of physician relations, said the purpose is to offer a soothing atmosphere. Banfield joked that some might wonder if they’d died, but at least they would know they ended up in the right place.

Humor is a big part of their current wellbeing for both women. Heart disease, they said, can make women particularly vulnerable to depression. According to an article in the Morristown Memorial newsletter, people with heart disease are 40 percent less likely to laugh than their healthier counterparts.

“Laughing reduces stress and lowers the risk of heart disease,” it said.

But joking aside, Levy and Banfield have a simple prescription: Women — and men, of course — should eat right, exercise, and make sure they’re getting the right medical tests.

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