Rowena went to bed exceptionally tired. In the middle of the night, she woke to her heart fluttering (2024)

Rowena Newman did boot camp twice a week, had good blood pressure and ate well.

Being a single mother in a high-pressure marketing job, going to bed exhausted was not unusual.

But one night she was so tired that when she tried to stand, her leg muscles weren't working properly.

It was a shock when she woke at 3am the next morning feeling "something catastrophic was happening".

"It felt like I had a butterfly in my chest," Ms Newman said.

The 47-year-old felt her heart fluttering, but not pumping.

The Sydney-based mother called out to her 11-year-old daughter Claudia, who was sleeping in the adjacent bedroom, and told her to call an ambulance.

When the ambulance arrived, Ms Newman had a cardiac arrest.

She doesn't remember the next eight minutes when she was being resuscitated and defibrillated.

"I had gone. I experienced what it feels like to have that happen," Ms Newman told Nightlife on ABC Radio.

"I don't have memory of the defibrillation but I have memory of the wave of my heart not working and what that felt like as it all sort of stopped."

Lucky to survive

Claudia Howard said she was used to being woken up by her mother, but not at three in the morning.

She remembers the paramedics arriving about five minutes after calling Triple-0.

"It was a bit worrying," Claudia said.

"But it was good that the paramedics were there."

Ms Newman was revived and was rushed to hospital where she had more cardiac arrests.

She feels lucky to have survived her ordeal three years ago.

Coronary heart disease is the second-leading cause of death for women in Australia, accounting for around 7,000, or 8 per cent, of deaths.

It struck Ms Newman that her cardiac arrest didn't feel like an elephant crushing her chest.

That's because the crushing feeling is how men experience heart attacks.

For women, the symptoms are more subtle, including fatigue and shortness of breath.

According to experts, this misconception is symptomatic of a great disparity in the way women's heart health is studied and medically treated.

Less likely to get the right diagnosis

Cardiologist Nikki Bart says differences in the symptoms of a heart attack in men and women come down to women having smaller hearts because generally women have a smaller body size.

Dr Bart says this has an impact on how women get diagnosed and treated.

"Even though they're typical for women, this means that they're under-recognised," Dr Bart told Nightlife.

"Women are less likely to get the correct diagnosis, less likely to have the right investigations, like an angiogram, and then less likely to be on the right treatment."

Women have also been under-represented in research, which has had an impact on what we know about heart attacks, according to Dr Bart.

"Even now, most clinical trials only enrol about a quarter of women relative to men," she said.

"This really has to change for us to really understand the differences."

Heart risks written in our genes

Dr Bart is on a deep-dive mission into the causes of heart disease in women.

The Australian cardiologist says sometimes, the cause may be in our DNA.

Dr Bart works at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in the United States, where researchers discovered the first gene to cause a heart problem.

By tapping into their knowledge, Dr Bart is hoping she can learn more about the genetics that contribute to heart muscle disease.

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"With certain genes, women develop heart disease earlier or later," she said.

"We've got to understand those on an individual level, so that we can then apply them to patients."

Dr Bart is also learning about using gene editing to potentially address problem genes that cause heart disease.

"We can actually use gene editing or gene cutting technology to cut out that disease gene," she said.

"It's a fascinating and very fast moving area."

The mind-heart connection

Another risk factor researchers are learning more about is the link between stress and heart health, or the "mind-heart" connection, as Dr Bart puts it.

"You have [a] direct stress event, and then the heart actually starts to fail," Dr Bart said.

"We see patients that have just been to a funeral, or have had really bad news delivered or even stressful, good news."

Dr Bart says chronic stress has a wear-and-tear effect on the heart.

Ms Newman knows this too well.

Despite being fit and healthy, Ms Newman had been suffering a lot of stress from a decade of family court proceedings, a high-pressure job and juggling all of that with being a single parent.

Doctors told her this may have contributed to her cardiac arrests.

"I just thought that you could kind of deal with that [stress] and come out the other side," she said.

"I've subsequently learned that managing stress is a really important thing."

Walking for an issue close to the heart

Ms Newman says her outlook on life has changed.

She spends less time working after hours, tries to spend more quality time with friends and always makes time for exercise.

She still does boot camp twice a week too.

Part of this is taking on Coastrek, where she walked 50 kilometres between Palm Beach and Balgowlah on Sydney's Northern Beaches to raise money for The Heart Foundation. The foundation held its annual Heart Health Week this week.

"It's a great way to get out with your friends," Ms Newman said.