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.
Why Think About Heart Disease Now?
Now that you know what heart disease is, you might be wondering why you need to be concerned about it now. After all, if you’re just entering perimenopause, you’re probably in your forties, or if you’ve just experienced menopause, you might be in your early fifties. You’re far from some old-timer who needs to worry about a failing heart—right?
Actually, you’re right about the first part of that statement, but wrong about the last. At forty or fifty, you’re far from being an old-timer, but heart disease doesn’t strike only the elderly. Heart disease is the number one killer of women age fifty and over. One in five women has some type of heart or blood vessel disease, and every year nearly half a million women in the United States die from cardiovascular diseases.
High Cholesterol
High blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for developing heart disease. After menopause, women tend to develop high levels of triglycerides (a form of fat), in addition to high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), cholesterol. At the same time, their levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) can diminish. All of these factors lead to out-of-balance blood cholesterol levels, too much fat in the bloodstream, and the buildup of artery-clogging plaque in the pathways that channel oxygen rich blood to the heart and brain. For every 1 percent reduction in elevated blood cholesterol levels, you get a 2 to 3 percent reduction in your chances of having a heart attack.
Don’t misunderstand the issue about cholesterol; cholesterol is a natural, essential substance in the bloodstream. The fraction of your total cholesterol that is HDL cholesterol is actually a protein that helps keep all fats and cholesterols moving through your bloodstream (and not glued to your arterial walls), so it actually helps you stave off a potential heart attack. LDL cholesterol moves cholesterol through the rest of your body-but it also has a tendency to linger in your arteries and stick to the walls. Elevated levels of triglycerides may or may not indicate that you’re headed for a heart attack, but as another type of fat in the bloodstream, their levels need to be monitored.
So how much is too much (or not enough) of these substances? While your total blood cholesterol level should remain below 200 mg/dl (milligrams per deciliter of blood), and anything over 239 mg/dl needs to be considered a high risk, here’s how the individual cholesterol numbers should stack up:
- HDL-more than 60 mg/dl is a good number here, less than 35 mg/dl
puts you at high risk. - LDL-less than 130 mg/dl is desirable, up to 159 mg/dl is considered
borderline high, and 160 mg/dl and higher is high risk. - Triglycerides-less than 200 mg/dl is considered normal, up to 400
mg/dl is borderline high, 400 to 1,000 mg/dl is high, and over 1,000
mg/dl is way too high.
