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Would Menopause Raise Heart Disease Risk? Being a natural phase of a woman’s life cycle, menopause most likely happens after the age of 40. On average, the beginning of menopause, when menstrual periods permanently stop, occurs around the age of 54. Nevertheless, premature menopause may happen to some women before 40 because of surgery like hysterectomy, or damage to the ovaries such as from chemotherapy. Early menopausal symptoms may include hot flush, night sweats, insomnia and mood changes. Hot flush is a sudden feeling of warmth that spreads over the upper body, often with blushing and some sweating. The severity may vary from mild in most women to severe in others. Intermediate symptoms of irritation, discomfort and bladder changes are also very common. The symptoms can last for 3 months to more than 10 years, and there is no way of predicting how long they will last. Certain long-term effects of menopause can emerge, one of which is on the bones that eventually lead to osteoporosis, increasing the risk of fracture. And there is another important long-term effect on the cardiovascular system that is always overlooked. Once a woman reaches the age of natural menopause, her risk for heart disease increases dramatically. There is an increase in cases of heart attack among women about 10 years after menopause.
Menopause is not a disease and it certainly does
not cause cardiovascular disease. But certain risk factors increase around the
time of menopause and those unhealthy lifestyles one had earlier in life could
begin to cause damage to the health. Women who have gone through menopause and
have other heart disease risk factors are at even greater risk. These risk
factors include diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure, high LDL or bad
cholesterol, low HDL or good cholesterol, obesity, inactive lifestyle, and
family history of heart disease.
In general, women have a lower risk of developing heart disease before menopause. But during and after menopause, the risk of getting heart disease and other circulatory conditions rises. This is because the natural hormone oestrogen declines among post-menopausal women. Oestrogen, also known as estrogen, is a group of sex hormones that promote the development and maintenance of female characteristics in the human body. Oestrogen is important because it helps to protect different parts of the body, including the heart and blood vessels. Oestrogen protects the arteries of a woman’s heart in a number of ways, including by reducing build-up of fatty plaque. This means that a woman is at an increased risk of heart and circulatory disease after menopause. Low oestrogen can trigger a number of things. Blood pressure tends to rise because of stiff and less elastic heart and blood vessels and this may cause hypertension. It can decrease good cholesterol, increase bad cholesterol and triglycerides (another kind of fat in the blood) that can increase the risk of developing heart and circulatory disease. Going through menopause, women can become more resistance to insulin making them more likely to become prediabetic and diabetic as they transition from perimenopause to menopause. The change in hormone can often cause an increase in abnormal heart rhythms like atrial fibrillation, which can also be brought on by hypertension. With slower metabolism, menopausal women tend to gain weight, which can put stress on the heart and increase the risk of heart disease.
Symptoms like palpitations, shortness of breath,
pressure in the chest, headaches, light-headedness or dizziness, jaw ache,
swelling of the feet and difficulty lying flat should never not be ignored.
Palpitations could indicate atrial fibrillation that can raise the risk of
stroke. Shortness of breath might be a sign of congestive heart failure or
coronary artery disease. Pressure in the chest could be an indication of heart
disease, and headaches might be a sign of hypertension. Light-headedness or
dizziness can be caused by diabetes, heart failure or atrial fibrillation. Jaw
ache is a warning sign of a heart attack in women. Swelling of feet and
difficulty lying flat (a symptom of fluid pooling in the lungs) could be due to
congestive heart failure. Date: February 14, 2019
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