By KELLY CARROLL

There is a dire need to raise awareness about heart disease in women. It is the number one killer of American women, and key data points reveal a lack of cognizance among doctors and women.

An assessment of primary care physicians published in 2019 revealed that only 22% felt extremely well prepared to evaluate cardiovascular disease risks in female patients. A 2019 survey of American women showed that just 44% recognized heart disease as the number one cause of death in women. Ten years earlier, in 2009, the same survey found that 65% of American women recognized heart disease as the leading cause of female death, revealing an alarming decline in awareness. 

Recent evidence suggests that many adults don’t know the important health numbers that can help identify heart disease risk factors, like their blood sugar and cholesterol. A 2024 survey of American adults conducted by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that only 35% of adults knew their blood pressure and 16% of adults knew their cholesterol levels. In comparison, the study reported that 58% knew their childhood friend’s birthday.

Heart Disease Risk Factors in Women

Women have specific risk factors for heart disease that don’t pertain to men. Nanette Wenger, M.D., a cardiologist and researcher, said in an American Heart Association (AHA) statement, “For most of the last century, heart disease was considered a problem for men, and women were believed to have cardioprotective benefits from female sex hormones such as estrogen. However, emerging evidence shows that there are a substantial number of heart disease risk factors that are specific to women or predominant in women.” Some gender-specific risk factors outlined by the AHA are early onset of menstruation, early menopause, autoimmune disease, anxiety, depression, and pregnancy complications.

Bethany Barone Gibbs, Ph.D., an associate professor at West Virginia University, emphasized in an email that pregnancy is a “critical window” for women’s cardiovascular health. She said, “The cardiovascular and metabolic challenge of pregnancy may unmask risk for conditions like hypertension and diabetes, but it is also possible (though not yet clear) that experiencing an adverse pregnancy outcome may independently contribute to the development of maternal cardiovascular disease.” A history of adverse pregnancy outcomes can be associated with more than two times the risk of cardiovascular disease later in life, she explained. 

Filling in knowledge gaps regarding the connections between pregnancy and long-term cardiovascular health is important to improving outcomes.

One knowledge gap is effective strategies to reduce future cardiovascular disease risk among people who experience adverse pregnancy outcomes. “Though we know these individuals are at much higher risk for poor outcomes, evidence-based approaches that are tailored to the postpartum years (which often includes subsequent pregnancies) are lacking,” Gibbs said. 

Gibbs is working to identify the optimal physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep patterns during the postpartum years that may reduce cardiovascular risk. “We are hopeful that we can identify which behaviors are most important for cardiovascular recovery following pregnancy and we can work with these populations to prioritize the most potent interventions to support heart health during the postpartum period,” she said. 

Signs of Heart Disease in Women

Knowing the signs of heart disease in women is an important part of saving lives. Men and women both commonly experience chest pain during a heart attack, but women are more likely than men to have other symptoms unrelated to chest pain. These symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, perspiration, indigestion, atypical fatigue, faintness and pain in the torso, neck, jaw, shoulders and arms.

A February 2020 study reported that women under age 55 display different heart attack symptoms and a wider variety of symptom combinations than men. The study’s lead author, John Brush, Jr., M.D., said in an AHA statement, “As a physician, if you’re looking at a woman, you need to think more expansively. She might not have the prototypical combination of features of chest pain, radiating pain down the arm, shortness of breath and sweating, which are often the examples given in textbooks.” 

It is also common for women to attribute their heart disease symptoms to another ailment, such as the flu, acid reflux or aging. Failure to recognize the symptoms of heart disease can cause women to delay seeking treatment. While chest pain is still the most common symptom of heart disease in both men and women, awareness of other heart disease symptoms can help women get treatment faster.

Heart Disease Prevention

Most heart disease cases are preventable. Wenger said in an AHA statement, “About 80-90% of cardiovascular disease is preventable. Implementing preventative strategies early could have a significant impact on reducing premature cardiovascular disease, stroke and related mortality for women.”

Lifestyle choices like maintaining a healthy diet and prioritizing physical activity can help prevent heart disease. Keeping a healthy weight and steering clear of tobacco products also support cardiovascular health. A person understanding her individual risks of heart disease and factors that may put her at higher risk, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, is also helpful. The AHA has outlined the top 8 factors for cardiovascular health, called Life’s Essential 8. They are: Eat Better, Be More Active, Quit Tobacco, Get Healthy Sleep, Manage Weight, Control Cholesterol, Manage Blood Sugar, and Manage Blood Pressure. 

Efforts to Raise Awareness and Understanding

National efforts are being made to raise awareness of heart disease in women. The AHA hosts the Go Red for Women campaign to fight cardiovascular disease in women. Circulation published the eighth yearly Go Red for Women issue featuring new cardiovascular research in women in 2024. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute also hosts a cardiovascular health education program called The Heart Truth. 

While these efforts are underway to improve heart disease outcomes for women, women need more. AHA laid out a constellation of strategies to improve women’s heart health in a May 2022 publication, and several deserve further emphasis here. To make progress, we need more and improved gender-specific cardiovascular disease training for healthcare providers. We need more collaboration between cardiologists, obstetricians-gynecologists, primary care physicians and other healthcare providers to improve the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease in women. We need more research on gender-specific cardiovascular disease to fill in knowledge gaps and improve prevention and treatment strategies. 

We also need more awareness. Spreading awareness of the risk factors and symptoms of heart disease in women can help save lives. Campaigns can help spread this message, and men and women sharing this information with other men and women can also help. If we all know the risk factors and symptoms of heart disease in women, all our mothers, sisters, daughters, neighbors and friends will be better off. 

More than 300,000 women in the U.S. died from heart disease in 2021. Let’s make sure that number is much lower in 2031 and beyond. 

Kelly Carroll is a freelance health writer based in Kentucky. More at her site

Can artificial intelligence help prevent cardiovascular diseases? Biotech startup, Prevencio, has developed a proprietary panel of biomarkers that uses blood proteins and sophisticated AI algorithms to detect cardiovascular conditions like coronary and peripheral artery disease, aerotic stenosis, risk for stroke and more. Dean Loizou, Prevencio’s VP of Business Development, breaks down the process step-by-step and explains exactly how Prevencio reports its clinically viable scores to doctors. How does the AI fit into all this? We get to that too, plus the details around this startup’s plans for raising a B-round on the heels of this work with Bayer.

Filmed at Bayer G4A Signing Day in Berlin, Germany, October 2019.

By MERCEDES CARNETHON PhD

This month, we saw historic turnout at the polls for midterm elections with over 114 million ballots cast.  One noteworthy observation regarding voter turnout is record rates of participation by younger voters aged between 18 to 29 years old.  Around 31 percent of people aged 18 to 29 voted in the midterms this year, an increase from 21 percent in 2014, according to a day-after exit poll by Tufts University.

Surely their political engagement counters the criticism that millennials are disengaged and disconnected with society and demonstrates that millennials are fully engaged when issues are relevant to them, their friends, and their families. Why, then, do we not see the same level of passion, engagement and commitment when young adults are asked to consider their health and well-being?

I have had the privilege of being a member of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-funded Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study research team. In over 5,000 black and white adults who were initially enrolled when they were 18 to 30 years old and have now been followed for nearly 35 years, we have described the decades-long process by which heart disease develops. We were able to do this because, in the 1980s when these studies began, young adults could be reached at their home telephone numbers. When a university researcher called claiming to be funded by the government, there was a greater degree of trust.

Unfortunately, that openness and that trust has eroded, particularly in younger adults and those who may feel marginalized from our society for any number of valid reasons. However, the results—unanswered phone calls from researchers, no-shows at the research clinic and the absence of an entire group of adults today from research studies, looks like disengagement. Disengagement is a very real public health crisis with consequences that are as dire as any political crisis.

As a public health researcher who has been documenting trends in obesity and heart disease for nearly two decades, a number of frightening patterns have arisen.  One pattern is that three out of every four adults are now overweight or obese and the average age of onset of obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes is falling.  Heart disease and chronic heart failure are developing in middle-age—a time that compromises financial well-being secondary to missed days of work managing illness. The negative implications for caring for growing families and aging parents are obvious.  A frightening harbinger of our future are the children and adolescents who see and feel the impact of these illnesses, but who don’t know how to prevent them because the research studies that have identified risk factors have little relevance to their lives today.

The reason they do not have these answers is related to the second startling pattern that young adults are even more difficult to engage in medical and public health research than their older counterparts. I have led and been a member of many research teams and we are extremely grateful for the retired grandmothers and the reluctant, but willing, grandfathers who donate their time to answer questions about their health and allow us to poke, prod and test them.

Due to their participation, we have identified the major causes of cardiovascular disease in the population. However, our knowledge about the evolution of obesity and cardiovascular disease in young adults is limited to studies that were formed in the 1980s before our social and cultural landscape was dotted with mobile devices, online communications and concerns about safety and privacy.

Young adults certainly have many competing responsibilities, including finishing their education, starting first jobs and building their own families. To saddle them with another responsibility seems unfair.  However, just as participating in our political system is one of our many rights and responsibilities as citizens, participating in our public health system should be, too. Ultimately, the goals of public health are to protect the health of all citizens and promote wellness. The national fervor and debate about health care demonstrate the passion people have for health. We need for young adults to stand together and show up to participate in their health with the same fervor and passion with which they showed up at the polls.

Mercedes Carnethon is the Mary Harris Thompson Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chief of Epidemiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

“Why aren’t you taking your cholesterol medication?”  I asked the woman.

With the coronary disease I diagnosed a year ago, my discovery that she had not taken her medication was very troubling.

“It made me tired,” she replied matter-of-factly.  ”And besides, the cardiologist said the stress test was negative, so my heart is fine!”

I ordered the stress test after her heart calcium score was significantly elevated, revealing significant atherosclerosis.  She totally misunderstood the results, and I needed to fix that problem.  So I pulled out my secret weapon: a good analogy.

“The purpose of the calcium score test was to see if you had termites in your home”  I explained.  ”I found them.  The negative stress test just said that the termites hadn’t eaten through your walls.  It’s good news that your walls aren’t falling down, but they will if we don’t stop the termites.”

Her eyes opened wide comprehension: the termites were eating her walls.  She was living on borrowed time.

“Would you take a medication if it didn’t have side effects?” I asked.

She quickly nodded.  Of course she would.  From now on she would be a compliant patient.

Compliance is good.  Noncompliance is bad.  It’s something I learned very early in my training: patients who do what their doctors say are compliant (good), and those who don’t follow instructions are noncompliant (bad).  If you are lucky as a doctor, you have compliant patients.  They are the best kind.   They obey their doctors.  They are submissive.  Noncompliant patients are bad; they are a bunch of deadbeats.

Please hold your nasty comments; I don’t really believe my patients should obey or submit to me.*

Sadly, however, many doctors wouldn’t flinch at that description of noncompliance, heaping all the blame of noncompliance on the patient’s shoulders. But this woman’s story (true, albeit changed for anonymity) illustrates one of the most common cause of noncompliance: misunderstanding. She was thrilled when her stress test was negative, grasping at the opportunity to be out from under the diagnosis of heart disease.  The cardiologist told her that her “heart was fine,” and that was all she needed to hear to be excused from taking her cholesterol medication.  She didn’t understand, and the blame of that misunderstanding can be shared between me, who didn’t adequately explain the test before sending her to it, the cardiologist, who gave her “good news” that didn’t tell the whole story, and the patient herself, who didn’t ask questions when she should have.  It wasn’t until I gave the termite analogy that she really understood.

I love good analogies.

In the “good old days” of medicine, doctors were not obligated to explain things like they are today.  Patients didn’t have access to medical information and so would have to take the doctors at their word about what they should do.  Today, however, patients have far more knowledge at their disposal than the doctor has in his/her head.  Contrary to what some doctors think, this is (usually) a good thing. The doctor is forced to defend and explain medical decisions, making truly bad decisions less likely.  True, some questions come from untrustworthy medical sources (websites selling “miracle” cures, those relying on anecdotal data, conspiracy theorists, and Dr. Oz), but if I can’t give a convincing enough argument to counter these foes, one of two things is true:

1. I am not on solid scientific ground.
2. The patient doesn’t trust me.

Either one of these is valuable for me to know.

So I have come to see compliance not as a monicker of disdain, but as a challenge to overcome.  I will never get  near 100% compliance, but I don’t get this from my kids, my car, or my dog, so why should I expect it from my patients?  Besides, I get paid the same amount if the people ignore what I say; my job is simply to give them the best advice I have.

Once I get that taken care of I can turn my attention to more important things: compliance with “meaningful use,” “medical home,” and other fun stuff.  I need to make sure I am obeying and submitting to those wonderful Washington bureaucrats.  I never question them because they know what’s best for me.

*I’m using the crazy language tool called hyperbole. It’s good clean fun.  You should try it some time.

Rob Lamberts, MD, is a primary care physician practicing somewhere in the southeastern United States. He blogs regularly at More Musings (of a Distractible Kind). Where this post first appeared. For some strange reason, he is often stopped by strangers on the street who mistake him for former Atlanta Braves star John Smoltz and ask “Hey, are you John Smoltz?” He is not John Smoltz. He is not a former major league baseball player. He is a primary care physician.