My partner and I attended a hockey game last month with a "Go Red" promotion, and we talked a little about whether additional support for women was appropriate. Generally speaking, women are better at monitoring their health than men. Here's some of what has already been covered in Difference Blog about heart-disease differences between men and women:
- Ironically, both sexes seem to feel that heart disease risk is higher for the opposite sex than for their own (3/12/07).
- Women's heart attack symptoms present differently than men's, which can lead to misdiagnosis (10/11/06, 1/15/09).
- The care regimens for heart disease seem to work more effectively for women than men (12/10/08). Research for women's heart health also lags, but the difference in apparently available populations makes parity difficult (e.g. 11/26/08, 11/15/06)
- Men and women are equally likely to call an ambulance for a heart attack (9/10/07)
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4 comments:
I think that the reasoning I heard before was the same one that news article cites (that women seek help later for heart attacks).
However it seems odd to me, to focus on women, when there is such an age discrepancy.
kementari2
2009-02-09 09:47 pm UTC
My doctor told me that the best heart disease risk indicator for men is cholesterol (I think), closely followed by Cardiac Reactive Protein (CRP) level. For women, cholesterol is pretty much unrelated to risk level, and CRP is a very strong indicator.
CRP is a measure of inflammation usually tied to infection, commonly Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections, though it can also spike with colds and other acute infections. Research is still being done, but the word on the street among some doctors is that there's a much higher chronic infection link to heart disease and many other conditions than previously understood.
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[info]differenceblog.com
2009-02-09 10:00 pm UTC
Interesting! I really wondered how much of the decreased sense of risk among women was based on having much lower cholesterol than their husbands' (yes, that assumes heterosexuality, but in the aggregate, that's reasonable). If cholesterol isn't that great a predictor for women, I feel like that's something that should be marketed loudly.
When I first started looking into Go Red For Women, and American Heart Month, promoting heart health in women made sense because, personally, I had no idea just how much heart disease affects women. But, you're point is well received because women account for 51% of CVD deaths while men account for 49% - hardly a significant difference to warrant a national campaign such as Go Red For Women.
Still - i did discover a few valid points that underscore campaigns like Go Red: i.e. once clinical CVD had developed, women may have a worse prognosis and greater incidence of heart failure than male counterparts. (Limiations of Current Cardiovascular Risk Assessment Strategies in Women, Journal of Women's Health, V15, #1, 2006) also, the same article cited a study that found women experienced a majority of first events as stroke rather than CHD - resulting in greater disability.
@Mya
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! The incidence of stroke among women is a frightening and serious problem, and I should look into that some more, too.
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