A woman’s heart health may decline precipitously after menopause, a new study suggests. On average, men are more likely to have a heart attack at a younger age. According to Harvard Health, the average age for a man to have his first heart attack is 65. But after midlife changes, women’s risk profiles quickly catch up with men’s, according to a new study presented at the American College of Cardiology.

During the study period, women’s arteries hardened twice as fast as men’s. Researchers theorize that the likely culprit is estrogen, a female hormone that has protective effects on heart health until it declines during menopause. Scientists have long known about this benefit of estrogen, but many women are still unaware, experts say.

What does this new research mean for women? Here’s what you need to know about estrogen, menopause, and heart health.

What did the new study find?

Researchers at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, looked at a measure of heart health called the coronary artery calcium (CAC) score in 579 postmenopausal women and compared their scores to many with similar risk profiles. The scores were compared with those of men. age, race, and other health conditions. All participants in the study were taking statins to control their cholesterol.

The CAC score measures how much calcium builds up in the heart and surrounding arteries as plaque hardens. These plaques are waxy mixtures of fat and cholesterol that can build up and calcify, clogging arteries and preventing oxygen-rich blood from moving efficiently. In my heart. A CAC score of 0 means no calcium plaques have been detected, indicating a low risk of heart attack or heart disease. The higher your CAC score, the more plaque is blocking your arteries, putting you at risk for heart attack and heart disease.

All participants in the study underwent two CAC scans at least one year apart. Women’s risk scores soared, on average twice as high as men’s, suggesting that heart health declines dramatically after menopause. The advantage women have over men in heart health quickly disappears.

What does menopause have to do with heart health?

Age aside, estrogen is the likely link between heart health and menopause. (It is worth noting that men also have estrogen, but their levels are much lower than in women.)

Although the primary role of sex hormones is female sexual development, they play many secondary roles throughout the human body. For example, estrogen performs very beneficial housekeeping throughout the cardiovascular system. Keeps blood vessels relaxed and open, reducing the risk of high blood pressure. It binds to cholesterol and plaque and clears them from the arteries, preventing those passageways from hardening and narrowing. Estrogen is similarly sticky to free radicals, harmful airborne molecules caused by oxidative stress. This hormone also helps clear these and reduce inflammation.

When a woman goes through menopause, the ovaries’ production of estrogen slows dramatically, and the hormone’s protective effects are lost. And during menopause, “oestrogen starts to decline – it’s more like a dimmer, not a light switch – and you see an increase in fat.” [fat] organization, weight [gain]It slows down your metabolism and affects your sleep,” Dr. Melissa Tracy, a cardiologist at Rush University Medical Center, tells Yahoo Life. All of these changes increase a woman’s risk of heart disease.

How to protect your heart health after menopause

Tracy says a healthy lifestyle is your best protection. This includes “getting exercise, being mindful of your diet by reducing saturated fat and increasing whole foods, and taking care of your mental health and sleep by practicing mindfulness to cope with stress.” “It is included.

Estrogens naturally found in women have protective effects on the cardiovascular system, but synthetic estrogens used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to treat menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes have no effect. It is also important to note that In fact, for some people, HRT increase Risk of other cardiovascular diseases such as blood clots. It is also not recommended for people with a history of breast or uterine cancer, liver disease, or heart attack. It is unclear why synthetic estrogens do not have the same cardiovascular benefits as hormones produced by the ovaries.

The authors of the new study suggested that based on their findings, more postmenopausal women may want to consider CAC heart scans to determine their risk. Tracy also emphasized the importance of taking statins if your health care provider recommends them. Statins, like those taken by people enrolled in the new study, are drugs that help lower levels of “bad” cholesterol, which causes harmful arterial plaque, as measured by CAC scores.

Underutilized statins may be particularly important for postmenopausal women, Tracy said, because they have more “soft plaque” than men. This is because a woman’s bad cholesterol levels increase after menopause.

The soft plaques she’s referring to are unstable clumps of fat and cholesterol that float around in your blood system. Although calcification can harden and narrow arteries, putting you at risk for a heart attack, floating plaque actually represents a person’s overall risk because it eventually hardens and calcifies. is the amount of When you start taking statins, these soft plaques settle down and find their final home in the blood vessels, “so your coronary artery calcium scores go up,” Tracy says. However, statins stop the liver from producing more cholesterol and help the organ remove more existing cholesterol from the blood. Less cholesterol in the blood means less soft plaque, resulting in less calcification and overall lower risk of heart disease, even if increased calcification is seen shortly after starting statin therapy. This means that the risk of

“We know that statins can help improve mortality and morbidity from cardiovascular disease. The question is: Are women alone enough?” Tracy said, adding that she may need to increase her statin dose or seek additional treatment. I’m wondering if it would be more effective to do so. “Do we need to treat postmenopausal women more aggressively?”