You’re dealing with menopause, hot flashes, and now doctors are warning women to pay attention to their risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. New research suggests the years leading up to menopause is when women are most at risk for developing these chronic diseases, especially for African American women.
University of Virginia doctors want women to pay attention to their waistline, triglyceride (blood fat) levels, HDL (good cholesterol) levels, lood pressure and blood sugar.
These markers, which are known as metabolic syndrome when tied together, are what help to determine your risk of several diseases from heart disease to diabetes. Having one of these conditions, such as a large waistline, or high blood fat, blood pressure or blood sugar levels, doesn’t mean you have metabolic syndrome, but each increases your odds.
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“Previous research showed that after menopause, women were at much greater risk for metabolic syndrome than before menopause began,” Dr. Mark DeBoer, the study’s lead author, said.
“This latest study indicates that the increased risk observed earlier may be related more to the changes happening as women go through menopause and less to the changes that take place after menopause,” DeBoer said.
DeBoer’s findings stem from studying the health records of 1,470 women who were enrolled in a national U.S. study on arteries and heart health. The participants were picked based on whether the changes they went through during menopause and each was handed a score based on how severe their metabolic syndrome was.
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Turns out, metabolic syndrome had a tendency to kick in the fastest during the last years of pre-menopause and the transitioning years into menopause, known as perimenopause.
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Women of African-American descent dealt with a “much more rapid” increase in metabolic syndrome severity before menopause. They also had higher rates of metabolic syndrome across the board, especially high blood pressure.
The researchers say their findings support other studies that warn that African American women face a greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.
DeBoer said he hopes his findings will encourage doctors and other frontline health care workers to talk to women in this age group about being more cautious about their health and lifestyle. Being conscious of their risk factors could help decrease their risk of heart attack, stroke or diabetes, he said.
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“Of course, you could argue that all of us should be eating better and making sure we’re getting enough exercise. That’s definitely true, but the years transitioning to menopause may represent a ‘teachable moment,’ when patients are especially receptive to learning and putting into practice healthy habits that can make a difference in their cardiovascular disease risk,” DeBoer said.
His full findings were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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