"The View" Host Joy Behar Promotes Heart Health For Women
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Television host Joy Behar has been known to speak her mind about the issues of the day, and now she has an important message about how women can keep their hearts healthy. NY1's Health reporter Kafi Drexel filed the following report. Joy Behar can be seen every day speaking her mind on ABC's "The View," and now her latest opinion is that women need to know about heart disease.
So she has teamed up with Bayer Aspirin and WomenHeart: The National Coalition of Women With Heart Disease to get women talking to each other and their doctors about heart health.
Behar recently stopped by the NY1 studio to talk about the new campaign.
"There's a lot of heart disease in the family, on my mother's side of the family, and I'm on statin myself," Behar says.
Heart disease is the most common killer of women and men, and women are 1.5 times more likely to die than men in the first year after a heart attack.
The campaign offers an online guide called “Straight Talk,” which includes stories from women and doctors about how to reduce the risk of heart attacks.
"Well, the first thing you want to do when your cholesterol is high, diet and exercise are your first orders of the day," says Behar. "But sometimes that doesn't work because you have genetics that are interfering with your lifestyle. So you have to consult a doctor and see what your cholesterol levels are."
Behar doesn't claim to be a fitness guru herself.
"Every time I go to the gym I get a virus. It never fails," she says. "I touch [the equipment handles], I'm sick for a week."
But she has a few tips for keeping hearts healthy without radically changing one's lifestyle.
"Get on the bike, walk to the subway or the bus, or don't take the bus if you don't have to, and eat one carb a day," says Behar.
She has special advice for women.
"I think that women do worry about everybody but themselves at some point, and need to really say, 'Listen, if I'm not healthy, nobody else is going to make it in this family,'" says Behar. "So check up every year, get the mammogram, the heart check, the EKG, all of that, very important."
To win the chance to have a "heart to heart" talk with Behar and check more facts about women and heart disease, visit the "I Am Pro Heart" Facebook page.