Women Have Heart Attacks Too (But Don’t Get Treated the Same)
Women’s health is different from men in a lot of ways, and this isn’t much of a surprise to many. However, what does tend to be a surprise involves how heart attacks are on that list of differences. For decades, people have assumed that heart attacks and heart disease don’t discriminate between genders; everybody can suffer the same way, as the myth goes. In reality, heart attacks do affect women in very noticeably different ways.
Symptoms Specific to Women
The combination of sweating, vomiting, arm aching and chest pain might seem like an anxiety attack or panic stress situation, but combined they are very much associated with a heart attack. Ironically, women don’t typically get external treatment that automatically assumes a heart condition. Due to cultural assumptions that still linger annoyingly in the medical and social arena, panic attacks and anxiety attack get ignored, even by women themselves too. And that’s a dangerous pattern that still exists.
Women’s Heart Care
As Dr. Ian Weisberg confirms from his own two decades of practice experience, a good amount of women’s heart health starts with listening. It is one of the most powerful tools a doctor has with a patient. However, because of overloaded patient appointment schedules, constant barrages of administrative requirements, and in recent years pressing demands due to pandemic health support, many doctors simply don’t have time to spare to really listen well. They read immediate symptoms, categorize, provide a prescription or direct treatment and then move onto the next patient. It’s assembly-line health out of necessity, and it leaves room for mistakes or worse, not seeing warning signs at all.
The Causes are Shared But Reactions are Different
The causes of heart disease are not typically unique or different. Poor activity, bad diet and fatty processed food consumption and plaque buildup can give anyone a heart problem. That said, women’s bodies react more to plaque, the key blockage material in the arteries, and produce more of it than in men, on average. Because of the above, as well as additional different arterial behavior, women can realize a heart attack risk. Worse, it may come on with very different symptoms than the average case the medical industry is trained in.
Any type of chest pain that is serious and persistent shouldn’t be ignored, whether combined with other symptoms or alone. And women patients should insist on a review a heart attack versus allowing dismissal of the matter as something lesser without an actual test being performed. That said, pairing with the right heart doctor can make a big difference too, especially one who practices an age-old habit of really listening to patients.
Key Treatment Strategies
Reduction of stress and anxiety is essential for women’s heart health. In addition to exercise and diet, avoiding chronic high-stress conditions and related environments are also just as important. It can be as simple as change where one works, moving away from a high-stress office to a relaxed home office or similar, that makes a big health difference in a female patient.
Any type of chest pain that is serious and persistent shouldn’t be ignored, whether combined with other symptoms or alone. And women patients should insist on a review a heart attack versus allowing dismissal of the matter as something lesser without an actual test being performed. That said, pairing with the right heart doctor can make a big difference too, especially one who practices an age-old habit of really listening to patients.