For five years she suffered from shortness of breath and fatigue even though she was an exercise teacher and ate well.

So when Candace Laing's brother, who also led a healthy lifestyle, found blockages in his heart at only 45 she went to her doctors with her symptoms and brother's diagnosis.

The doctors sent her to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore where she had a stent operation — a wire metal mesh tube used to prop open an artery — and less than a year later, Mrs. Laing finally had to have a single heart bypass at 57.

Even after all of this, though, Mrs. Laing, now 60, believes she is lucky because she didn't have a heart attack during her surgeries and now she knows what was wrong with her all those years spent gasping for breath.

But she also believes she, like many women suffer in silence, and that is why she is urging the public to wear red tomorrow in support of the Bermuda Heart Foundation's 'Wear Red for Women's Hearts' day.

She said: "I would have shortness of breath going up the stairs, but I was ignoring it because I was a single person business and I didn't have time to take off. I was also extremely tired but I thought 'I am just pushing myself'. I was always very pale, people would even say so, but I thought it was just stress and fatigue.

"I went to Johns Hopkins and had an angiogram and had a stent put in right away. Six months later the symptoms came back. The stent had fractured."

Three fractured stents later, Mrs. Laing finally had a bypass which meant opening her chest, leaving her with a scar down the middle.

She said: "Fortunately I didn't have a heart attack during this because there was a lot going on. I would say to women don't have a bypass. If you can take care of yourself and prevent it, do it.

"I don't think people know how much stress their bodies are under. I am definitely a type A personality so I probably stress myself more than I need to."

Stress, hereditary traits like Mrs. Laing's, poor diet and lifestyle choices are the reasons both men and women suffer from heart disease.

But in women the disease presents so differently from men that often it is difficult to diagnosis and has led the disease to be the number one killer in women.

That's why the Bermuda Heart Foundation is urging the public to wear red tomorrow to show support and raise awareness about the disease in women.

The Women & Heart Disease campaign was launched in February 2006 because studies have shown that heart disease is the most common cause of death among women.

More women die of heart disease than from all cancers combined and it kills six times more women than breast cancer alone.

The problem is that the disease continues to be seen as a man's disease. (See fact box).

Mrs. Laing believes many women are also not diagnosed because they are generally the care givers and are embarrassed to go to the hospital in case it is nothing.

She said: "Women tried to be the care givers even when they need care themselves. They want to prolong visiting a doctor and put it off because they don't think it could be them.

"But the more they read and the more they understand, the more likely this disease will be caught."