The British Medical Journal has just released a study that shows it is aging and not menopause per se that increases a woman’s risk of heart disease.  Their report states:

What is already known on this topic

• Although heart disease mortality increases with age, it is lower in women than in men

• It has been suggested that this protective effect is due to female sex hormones, and the protection is therefore lost at menopause

What this study adds

• Heart disease mortality in women increased exponentially with age, with no acceleration at menopause. In men, there was a rapid increase during young adulthood followed by reduced rates of increase

• The early rapid acceleration in male heart disease mortality could explain these sex differences rather than menopausal changes in women

• Efforts to improve cardiac health in women should focus on their lifetime risk rather than only after menopause

Symptoms of heart attack vary significantly between men to women.  For men it is the traditional pain the chest and left arm.  However for women it is not so. While the most common heart attack symptom is still some type of pain, pressure or discomfort in the chest, women are more likely than are men to also have heart attack symptoms without chest pain, such as:

• Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or abdominal discomfort
• Shortness of breath
• Nausea or vomiting
• Abdominal pain or “heartburn”
• Sweating
• Light headedness or dizziness
• Unusual or unexplained fatigue.

Unfortunately many doctors are still uneducated in this regard and therefore women need to factor this in when experiencing the above symptoms.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 10:06 am and is filed under Health & Fitness, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.