Will Your Heart Be the Death of You?

When she was 20 years old, Ariel Penn went in for a routine physical and was diagnosed as having a mitral valve prolapse. “I was told by my doctor that a mitral valve that wasn’t closing completely was a fairly common condition,” Penn explains. “Many people have it and it’s not usually life-threatening.” She relates that she wasn’t given much information other than that. It wasn’t until years later when she suffered some shortness of breath and a fluttering in the chest that couldn’t be ignored.

It was more than 20 years after that first diagnosis when I was warned to not over stress my heart or get my cardio rate too high for fear of valve failure. They never told me any of this the first time! I was in the gym going like mad on an elliptical trainer one day and feeling terrible afterwards. I was barely able to catch my breath and was turning clammy and nauseous. The doctor gave me medication to regulate my heartbeat and to allow some resting time between heartbeats which they also found was a problem for me when they looked at my heart again.” The discovery, she says, was made through the use of an echocardiogram which revealed information that the standard EKG had missed.

I think everyone - no matter how young - should have an echocardiogram to make sure they don’t have any heart defects which can subsequently be fatal if undetected.” She illustrates her point with the story of a 27 year old coworker who died of a heart attack last year while he was preparing for a charity run. “He had an undiagnosed heart malfunction which wouldn’t have affected him had he only known and taken care not to go running which overstressed his heart.”

For years, Penn has been an avid walker. “It’s been my number one fitness activity and I found it a great way to take off weight and improve my overall fitness. It was always my goal to walk a half marathon - something that seemed like an almost unattainable dream.” Her persistence, however, allowed her to gradually work up from three miles a day to six and then to nine. “This year I walked and completed two half marathons. When I realized that I could do it, I thought ‘anyone can’ and wanted to develop a plan where others could work up to walking a half marathon. That’s how the concept of Wild at Heart was born.”

Scheduled for November 3rd at Pasadena’s famous Rose Bowl, Wild at Heart is a first annual event that will not only draw attention to the unique aspects of women’s heart health issues but also encourage individuals who always wanted to take part in a community marathon to join the fun instead of watching from the sidelines. “It’s unusual,” she explains, “in that it’s a progressive marathon. This means that you walk or run the 23.1 miles of the marathon in the days or weeks leading up to November 3rd and then complete your final 3.1 miles during the event day. You’re on an honor system and log your marathon miles on a work-out log provided at our website.” Registration details and additional information can be found at www.heartmarathon.com.

Participants can sign up pledges for each of their marathon miles which will benefit the American Heart Association, the Huntington Heart Center and WomenHeart. They can also simply choose to participate on the day of the event in the 3.1 mile walk. “The most important thing is that people are doing whatever it takes to get active.” She emphasizes that it’s a very “walker-friendly” marathon because many people aren’t able to run due to heart issues, joint problems, etc. “Everyone is welcome to participate if they have clearance from their doctor. Sponsors are invited to sign on as well if their products or services are heart friendly.”

The sponsors for this year’s event are the Pasadena Lion’s Club and Longevity Inc. (www.earlydetectionsaveslives.com). “Longevity is fantastic,” praises Penn, “because they do early detection screenings at cost that an insurance company would never do until someone is actually symptomatic. Frequently, delayed detection can come too late. We’re also excited that our community partners are the Metro, the City of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl. The Metro is committed to supporting green living and encouraging people to walk to public transportation and get fit by getting out of their cars!”

Penn is anticipating a turnout of at least several hundred people since part of the event involves a Wild at Heart Expo that is free to the public. “Each morning hundreds of people are strolling, running or cycling on the path of our event site. All the walkers, runners and cyclists are welcome to divert a few feet off their path, try some Naked Juice (samples of this healthy drink will be handed out), pick up information on heart health, and meet our sponsors who will be there as well.”

She’s hoping that Wild at Heart will turn out to be a model that other cities will want to follow. “The event is accessible to anyone wanting to participate. You don’t have to be an elite athlete. Plus it gives people realistic goals to get active or even to recover from heart failure. It’s a great community recreation activity.”

Organizing a major event such as Wild at Heart that involves so many moving parts, of course, would seem to call for super-human powers. Penn herself is no stranger to aggressive multi-tasking, late-breaking developments and extraordinary crisis management. As the Filming and Special Events Manager for the City of Pasadena, she is not only the go-to person for every movie, TV show and commercial that is shot here but oversees a staff that orchestrates over 85 events a year including the Doo-Dah Parade, the Lunar New Year Festival, and the Tournament of Roses. (See: Meanwhile Back at Stately Wayne Manor, California Chronicle, 11/12/06).

So how does she balance the demands of her profession with the demands of maintaining a healthy lifestyle?

Anyone in a stressful job has to decide whether their job comes before their health or their health comes before their job,” she replies. “Nothing should come before taking the best care of yourself that you can. Scheduling time for regular walking and other fitness activities is critical like anything else you’d schedule. I found that searching out ways to relax was equally important. About three years into my job with Pasadena, I started taking bass guitar lessons just for something to do that would be relaxing and take my mind completely off work.”

What she has learned about women’s heart issues that she wasn’t aware of prior to her own diagnosis would be enough to fill a book.

I was shocked, for instance, to find out that heart failure is the number one cause of death of women in the United States. More women died of heart failure in 2006 than men and it’s been this way since 1986! I was raised in a generation - as I’m sure that a lot of us were - to believe that women were bathed in estrogen and their risk was low compared to men’s (at least until menopause). But obviously the fatality statistics prove otherwise, that women are dying in greater numbers than men from heart failure. Currently, one out of every two women dies of heart failure in the United States. The reality is that many times it’s because women don’t recognize the warning signs which are more subtle in females; specifically, nausea, unexplained fatigue that lasts, a sharp pain in the jaw.”

This was surprising to me. I always assumed that breast cancer was the number one risk to women’s health and certainly it is something to take seriously. Annual mammograms are a must. Early detection screenings save lives, since whatever they can find early, they can pretty much cure now (greater than 95%). But women must also pay attention to their hearts, their lifestyle and get out and walk for a half hour a day, more preferably, as a baseline. Women tend to take their hearts for granted. It doesn’t have quite the same emotional pull as taking care of their breast health, with breasts being closely aligned to women’s self-image, femininity and desirability.”

She cites stress as the number one factor that has increased the number of heart-related fatalities for females over the past 50 years. “I remembering read about a woman - I can’t remember her name - who is the paragon of health. She was one of the founders of the healthy juice movement, exercised religiously every day, had always been thin and ate a near perfect diet, yet she was suffering from heart failure. She did have a history of heart issues in her family, but most people do. She confessed that she didn’t take care of her stress level, her interpersonal conflicts or her other emotional stressors. She was dying from her emotional life alone! Some recent studies are finding that emotional stress may be the highest risk factor for women in terms of heart failure.”

In addition to Wild at Heart, Penn is currently working on a committee with the American Heart Association to plan for women’s heart education month in February 2008. Her voice drops to a conspiratorial hush. “Let’s add a little fun and mystery to what it’s all about. People should pay close attention to the L.A. skyline on the evening of January 31, 2008. I won’t say anything more than that. But something special - even magical - is going to happen that night. Something people won’t be able to ignore. Something with a lot of heart.”

She closes the interview with a favorite quote from Alfred Lloyd Tennyson’s Sir Galahad: “My strength is the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.”

If her radiant smile and enthusiasm are accurate indicators, the heart of Ariel Penn is a happy one as well.