Young people are increasingly acting in ways that heighten the risk of developing heart disease, which is the No. 1 killer of women, and Indiana's first lady was on campus Wednesday to raise awareness about the disease.
About 40,000 women in Indiana will die of heart disease this year, Cheri Daniels said, and while people can't control some factors, they can control many.
A series of speakers addressed about 35 students, mostly women, about the steps they could take to prevent the disease. The speakers included Dr. Kent Bullis, director of Ball State University's Amelia T. Wood Student Health Center and Cindy Adams, a nurse practitioner and director of the Healthy Hearts Center at Indiana Heart Hospital,
"It is not likely that it will ever be easier for you to take good care of yourself as it is right now," Bullis said. "As you move into becoming working people and wives and mothers it will never get any easier to make time for diet and exercise and taking good care of yourself."
Bullis, and the other speakers, stressed how important increasing physical activity, dieting and quitting smoking were to preventing heart disease.
Adams has spent the last 12 years working with heart failure patients and recently started reaching out to educate people about prevention methods.
"I became fatigued of looking at patients who we could have possibly done something for 10 years ago or 15 years ago," she said.
Before the first lady's speech, heart-related screenings were offered for students. Speakers encouraged students to know the numbers of their blood pressure, cholesterol levels and glucose readings.
Brittany Madison, vice president of education and programming for the Panhellenic Council, which sponsored the event, said she learned a couple things from the speakers and thought it was presented in a way that registered with college students.
"It made me want to go back and check my cholesterol," she said.
Daniels said she was impressed with the number of students who were screened before the speech and thought the turnout was better than her Oct. 2 speech at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville.
The first lady is beginning a tour to college campuses throughout the state focused on raising awareness about heart disease, which she is calling her "Heart to Heart" initiative. Daniels encouraged everyone to reach out to at least one other woman they loved and educate them about heart disease.
"We've just got to get the word out," she said.
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