Heart Disease and Menopause
Heart disease is a term we’ve all heard, but may not fully understand. The umbrella term covers a wide range of diseases, illnesses, and events that impact the heart and circulatory system—known as cardiovascular diseases. High blood pressure and coronary artery disease that can lead to stroke, heart attacks, and early death are some of the most common forms of heart disease for both men and women.
We’ve all grown accustomed to thinking of the typical victim of heart disease as a middle-aged, overweight, out-of-shape man, but that’s yet another stereotype that just doesn’t reflect the real picture. Heart disease is the number one killer of women over fifty in North America today—or, putting it another way, one out of two women will die of cardiovascular disease. It’s true that prior to menopause women suffer fewer effects of heart disease and stroke than men. But as women age, their risk of heart disease increases dramatically. More than half of all stroke deaths occur in women.
Cancer Risks
Though heart disease is a more common disease among women, cancer is one of the most feared. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States; nearly four of every ten Americans will have some kind of cancer at some point during their lives, and nearly 80 percent of those diagnosed with cancer are age fifty-five or older. One-third of all women in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes, so as you approach menopause, it’s important that you understand which cancers have age-related risk factors for women. Cancer isn’t one disease. Actually cancer is a family of diseases, all of which occur when cell growth goes out of control in some part of the body. Cancer has been widely studied, but its causes are complex and still not fully understood. Contributing factors include environmental pollutants, heredity, occupation, nutrition, and lifestyle. At times, there is no medical explanation for why a certain type of cancer develops in a previously healthy person. Different cancers produce very different illnesses, each with its own symptoms, causes, and risk factors. The following sections discuss some of the most common cancers women face as they move into middle age. The object of this information isn’t to alarm you or to convince you that you’re doomed to suffer from this disease. But knowledge is power; this brief overview gives you a heads up to the risks your health management plan should monitor.
#1 Cancer Threat In Women: Lung Cancer
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States, and tobacco smoke is the leading cause of lung cancer. The American Lung Association reports that nearly 68,000 women died in the United States from lung cancer in 2000, as opposed to 41,000 who died from breast cancer. Although neither menopause nor age is a contributing factor in this disease, most women are diagnosed with lung cancer at age fifty—right around the time they hit menopause, and often after thirty-five or more years of tobacco smoke exposure. Women are twice as likely as men to contract cancer from tobacco smoke.
#2 Cancer Threat for Women: Breast Cancer
Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer contracted by women today, and advancing age appears to be a major risk factor in its development. Nearly 80 percent of all breast cancers are found in women over fifty, and the incidence of diagnosis and fatality both seem to rise with age. The American Cancer Society (ACS) reports that 163 per 100,000 women in the United States in their forties are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, and twenty-nine die of it; 374 per 100,000 women in their sixties will be diagnosed, and ninety of those will die from the disease. Age isn’t the sole risk factor; heredity, lifestyle, family health history, and personal health history, including early menstruation (before age twelve) and late menopause (after fifty-five), all can have an impact on your likelihood of developing breast cancer.
If your mother, sister, or daughter has had breast cancer, your risks of contracting it go up two to three times (depending on how many of these first-degree relatives are involved). And, if you’ve had breast cancer before, you have a higher risk of developing it again. If you’ve never had a child, or had your first child after age thirty, your risk goes up as well. But what about risk factors that you can change? The American Cancer Society lists the following risk factors for breast cancer that are specifically linked to lifestyle choices:
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
Most large studies and most world experts agree that long-term use of estrogen after menopause does not increase your risk of breast cancer. However, according to the ACS, a very few studies suggest that long-term use (ten or more years) of HRT may result in an increase in the risk of breast cancer. These conflicting studies have not gone unnoticed, and the connection between breast cancer and HRT is still the subject of ongoing research. Some medical professionals suspect that women who take estrogen are more likely to do self-breast exams, see their physicians regularly, and have mammograms. These women are more likely to have their cancers diagnosed at a very early stage, usually before thev can even be palpated by the physician or on a self-breast exam, so these tiny cancers can be cured with conservative surgery such as lumpectomy. These women also would be diagnosed in the United States during 2001; this cancer has a five-year survival rate of about 84 percent.
Your Contributions to Your Health
Medical science can’t do it all. You have to take responsibility for the most important part of your health maintenance—healthy living. Some components of a savvy, postforty health life plan go without saying; but let’s list them, anyway:
- Eat a varied diet that’s high in vegetables, fruit, complex carbohydrates, and plenty of calcium, vitamins, and minerals.
- Drink lots of water—at least one quart—every day.
- Exercise regularly—thirty minutes a day, four or more days a week is a minimum recommendation, but every day is better, and any exercise is better than none. Include both weight-bearing and aerobic exercise in your plan.
- Stop smoking.
- Stop smoking.
- Stop smoking.
- Relax. Stress and fatigue contribute to a wide variety of illnesses and
diseases, in ways that we probably don’t even fully comprehend. A calm, rested body and mind are your best defense against illness and disease. - If you’re sexually active, have your partner use a condom and
continue using contraception. Remember, until you’ve been diagnosed as having gone through menopause (by either an FSH test or after having passed an entire year without a menstrual period), you are still fertile and can still get pregnant. - Give yourself regular, monthly breast exams.
- Get regular, annual checkups, including any special tests for your risks.
