veryone knows a healthy heart is important for a healthy life. Some basics for keeping your heart healthy are eating right, exercising regularly, and avoiding tobacco. As simple as that seems, we still have a big problem with cardiovascular disease, more commonly known as heart disease. Each year in Wisconsin, heart disease causes more deaths than cancer, AIDS, car crashes, and alcohol abuse combine. In Wisconsin, African American and Native American adults have the highest death rates due to heart disease, and Asian American adults have the lowest heart disease death rate.

Heart disease is a major woman’s health issue. While once considered a “mans disease”, the truth is that the past 10 years in Wisconsin, more women than men died from the disease. Women often have a different symptom pattern than men, such as shortness of breath, exhaustion, nausea, vomiting, or back and jaw pain. So trust the messages your body sends you and seek regular care from a healthcare provider who values your input.

Tobacco is killing our mothers, friends, and daughters. It’s important to know the enemy. Tobacco use is not a habit – it’s an addiction. The deadly product makes billions of dollars in profit coming from the money and lives of our loved ones. We need to fight back individually and as a community against the power of tobacco.

There are three foundations to beating tobacco - treating addiction, preventing our kids from starting, and protecting our families from the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke.

• Get Help on How to Quit Successfully. If you or somebody you love is trying to overcome tobacco, she should consult her health care provider and/or call the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line at 1-800-QUITNOW. Most smokers know “why” they need to quit. Once smokers decide it’s time, they’ll need help in knowing “how” to beat this powerful addiction.

• Support a Significant Increase in the Tobacco Tax. Significantly raising the price of tobacco is the most effective way to prevent young adults from starting and becoming addicted.

• Support Smoke Free Workplaces. Wisconsin’s historic legislation proposed to make all worksites smoke-free. Not only do smoke-free workplace laws protect employees and customers from the dangers of secondhand smoke, these laws help remove smoking from our social fabric. The tobacco industry spent billions of dollars making tobacco glamorous and a passage to adulthood. It’s time to make this change because tobacco is deadly and has no business with the hearts of our future generation.

Remember, your heart needs you to take care of it. You need to have a heart, because tobacco doesn’t.

-Sheri Johnson, PH.D., State Health Officer
Wisconsin Division of Public Health