Go Red for Women by angelaeloise featuring Earnest Sewn jeans

Today is National Wear Red Day. The American Heart Association urges women nationwide to Go Red For Women to support the fight against heart disease, the number one killer of American women, by raising awareness for the disease and for the need for prevention. Women who understand their risk of heart disease and know the steps to prevent it are better equipped to avert this serious – and mostly preventable – health threat. This nationwide movement celebrates the energy, passion and power we have as women to band together to support each other and our health.

The Women’s Heart Foundation offers some eye-opening facts about women and heart disease. For example:

42% of women who have heart attacks die within 1 year, compared to 24% of men.

Under age 50, women’s heart attacks are twice as likely as men’s to be fatal.

267,000 women die each year from heart attacks, which kill six times as many women as breast cancer. Another 31, 837 women die each year of congestive heart failure, representing 62.6% of all heart failure deaths.

71% of women experience early warning signs of heart attack with sudden onset of extreme weakness that feels like the flu – often with no chest pain at all. Medical professionals are challenged to respond to women’s milder symptoms, acting with insufficient guidelines.

Nearly two-thirds of the deaths from heart attacks in women occur among those who have no history of chest pain.

Women who smoke risk having a heart attack 19 years earlier than non-smoking women.

The gap between research and care for heart disease between men and women is surprisingly disparate, but the good news is that women’s hearts respond better than men’s to healthy lifestyle changes. The Mayo Clinic offers a great list of tips that will help women lead longer, healthier lives and prevent heart disease, cancer and other threats to our health.

If you are wearing red today, you’re right in line with one of the hottest trends, with red being a hot color (pardon the pun) at Prada, Dior and Fendi, among others. For a fun read on dressing red, be sure to catch Rachel Baker’s Fashion Masochist: Scarlet Fever in the February issue of Boston Magazine.

But just in case you are finding either your hutzpah or your wardrobe a little light for going red head-to-toe today, I thought I’d offer my take on a great way to wear your heart on your sleeve today. Even the soles of the shoes are red!

(Thanks to Erin at Elements of Style, who is a whiz at Polyvore and turned me on to this fun way to play in an endless virtual closet.)