Women and Cardiac Health: The Secret that Women Need to Know

Patricia Dolhun, M.D., Gynecologist, Medical Director, Women’s Heart Program and Women’s Services, Columbia St. Mary’s

Posted: Feb. 1, 2008

Cardiovascular disease is not just a man’s disease; women have a one-in-three chance of developing the disease, making it the No. 1 cause of death for women in the United States! Yet coronary disease in women is under diagnosed, under treated and under researched.

The perception that heart disease was a man’s disease began to change in the 1990s, but we have a long way to go to make women aware that heart disease is a serious issue for them.

Building awareness
The Women’s Heart Program at Columbia St. Mary’s, started in January 2007, is focused on assessing accurate risk predictors for cardiovascular disease in women and to help with personal prevention strategies. Knowing your “heart healthy numbers” is a good place to start.

Your weight impacts your risk for cardiovascular disease, but it’s your body mass index or BMI number – a height-and-weight formula – that gives us an indication of a person’s level of body fat. We are also concerned with the waist-to-hip ratio and the overall waist measurement. Other numbers that assess your risk come from your lipid profile, which includes cholesterol levels – HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL (bad cholesterol), and triglyceride level. Blood pressure is also used to measure your risk.

Risk factors
Some risk factors can’t be modified, such as age, gender and family history. If your family history includes heart disease diagnosed earlier than age 65 for women, or for men, earlier than 55, cardiovascular risk is a factor in your profile. Premature menopause also is a risk factor.

There are risk factors that are modifiable. The No. 1 risk factor is smoking. Exposure to secondhand smoke also increases your risk. Quitting smoking impacts your heart health almost immediately. Two years after quitting, your risk factor from smoking is cut in half. We no longer just tell our patients to quit smoking; we counsel and prescribe behavioral modification therapy or pharmaceutical agents to assist them.

Diet and exercise have a huge impact on our heart health. Americans are quite interested in diets, yet about two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese.

We need to eat a balance of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains. We need certain fats — mono and polyunsaturated — in our diet that are found in foods such as nuts, avocado and soy to maintain cell walls and our nervous systems. Oily fish is an example of heart-healthy protein because it supplies the body with omega-3 essential fatty acids.

We also need to incorporate more activity into our daily lives. The recommendation is 30 to 60 minutes on most days, but walking even three days a week helps.

Diet and exercise also impact your risk for diabetes. Diabetes increases your risk of heart disease.

Ongoing stress is another modifiable risk factor, but we are only on the horizon of knowing what stress does to the heart.

It’s important to note that women’s risk of cardiovascular disease increases after menopause. We are still researching and looking at the whole issue of estrogen. We know that estrogen levels affect blood pressure, cholesterol levels and how our bodies handle sugars. So as a function of aging, we need to be diligent about our lifestyles. Poor lifestyle choices in our 20s tend to manifest themselves in our 40s and 50s in the form of cardiovascular disease risk.

Research shows that compared to men, women are not as likely to survive a heart attack. Women present coronary symptoms later than men, causing more heart damage to occur before treatment is administered. Also, women tend to be older when afflicted by a heart attack and may have other health co-morbidities, making it difficult to recover.

Because women need to be aware of their “heart healthy numbers,” Columbia St. Mary’s Women’s Heart Program goes into the community and meets with groups at health clubs, businesses and other organizations to teach, inform and screen for risk factors. The risks are very personal and this program gives each woman individual prevention strategies.

Patricia Dolhun, M.D.
Columbia St. Mary’s
414-326-1745

We Have Answers
Do you have medical questions or need help finding a doctor? The experts at Columbia St.Mary’s can help. Click here.