Why does the risk of heart attack increase in women with menopause

Heart diseases are the main cause of death for women worldwide, but remain undiagnosed or treated, according to a prominent cardiologist.

For doctor Susan Connolly, consultant at the University Hospital of Galway, it is crucial that women become aware of the risks that they incur from heart diseases, so that we have to eradicate the perception that this is an illness that fundamentally affects them. men.

The risk starts to increase, due to hormonal changes, at the moment of menopause, at the time of the life of a woman when she stops having her menstruations, assures this cardiologist.

“Before menopause, the risk of heart disease in women is much lower than in men, but it recovers quickly and is believed to be due to the decrease in estrogen, which in reality is a protective hormone of the heart ”, he explains.

Estrogens are a group of hormones that play a key role in female reproductive health, including puberty, menstruation, embarrassment and menopause. Also son important for the health of the heart, the bones and the brain, both in men and women, according to the National Library of Medicine of the USA. (NLM, for its abbreviations in English).

For Doctor Sandra McNeill, a gynecologist specializing in cardiovascular diseases, it is important that women find themselves in the best state of health possible when they reach menopause.

This includes not smoking, watching your weight, drinking alcohol and exercising.

“Traditionally, it was thought that heart problems only suffer men. Regrettably, that’s not clear. Women are protected in a certain way until menopause by estrogens”, says the gynecologist.

However, once you get to this stage in a woman’s life and the level of estrogens drops, the heart endures and, according to McNeill, heart problems outweigh those that men suffer.

Due to the positive effect of estrogens, women generally develop heart disease 10 years after men.

If menopause arrives before the age of 40, the risk of suffering from a heart disease is greater than other women of the same age.

different symptoms

“It is possible that we do not have the same symptoms as men, the classic symptoms that we have been taught at the Faculty of Medicine. But postmenopausal women have a greater risk of cardiovascular disease than men, and cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women is the main cause of death”, warns gynecologist McNeill.

These “classic” symptoms can be oppression in the chest, pain in the arm and difficulty breathing, which women who are suffering from heart disease can also experience. But they are not the only ones. Women can also report other symptoms, such as nausea, fatigue, indigestion, anxiety and vertigo.

“The women have to present themselves later (at the hospital) because they don’t realize they’re having a heart attack, they don’t come at risk,” argues Connolly.

Recognizing and treating a heart attack quickly improves the chances of survival.

After all, women are not diagnosed with the same speed as men.

This is due, among other things, to the fact that women are more prone to having a “silent” heart disease, that is to say, without symptoms, which sometimes health professionals do not recognize the disease because the symptoms are different from those of men.

Women also have a greater propensity to suffer from certain heart diseases that are more difficult to diagnose, such as microvascular coronary disease, ruptured heart syndrome or variant angina, explained in NLM.

A delay in diagnosis could lead to a delay in health care that could help prevent a serious illness such as a heart attack.

“He is the biggest asesino of women in the whole world”, says the cardiologist. “Mueren the double of women for heart diseases than for breast cancer, for what is crucial that women are aware of their risk, which starts to increase at the moment of menopause”.

In addition to taking care of their physical and mental health, women who want to take care of their hearts are also recommended to watch their cholesterol levels.