National Wear Red Day may only come once a year, but Star Jones, a TV personality, attorney, and national volunteer for the American Heart Association, said she works all year round to educate women on their risks for heart disease.

"A lot of people still think of [heart disease] as an old white dude disease," Jones said, but it's the "number one killer of all women, number one killer of black people, number one killer of all Americans," she said. "I'm three for three and I want people to understand what their risks are."

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists heart disease as the "leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States."

Ten years ago, Jones had open heart surgery, the "full-blown open heart surgery where they take your heart out of your body and do surgery on it," she notes. Initially, she had attributed symptoms like fatigue, intense heart palpitations, and lightheadedness when standing to being overweight. Now she knows these are warnings for heart disease for women.

She said her previous lifestyle "should have screamed heart disease," but she did not recognize the symptoms. Particularly now, she said, when demographic groups like millennials operate on "lack of sleep and addition of stress," they are adding to their cardiovascular risk. Jones said people need to know their personal health numbers like blood sugar and BMI, stop smoking, eat less, and move more.

Share:
More In Culture
Walk and Talk: New York Fashion Week Founder Fern Mallis
Cheddar News anchor Hena Doba joins Fern Mallis, founder of New York Fashion Week, for a walk-and-talk touching on the origins of the weeklong event and how it became one of the biggest celebrations of fashion in the world. 
StubHub Ranks Most In-Demand Summer Concerts
StubHub has compiled a list of the top 10 most in-demand concerts for the summer season, with Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Morgan Wallen, Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay rounding out the top five.
Load More