Heart attacks hit men, and the most common heart problems of women are Harlequin love trials? This is a damaging stereotype. Today we know that a woman’s heart attack means death more often.
When Carrie Fisher, the memorable princess Leia from Star Wars, took the heart attack, many of us thought that she was extremely unlucky, because men die of heart disease. Yet the truth is that heart attacks kill women much more often than men. Cardiovascular diseases (heart attack, heart failure, stroke) are no longer the domain of masters.
– In Poland, 84 thousand die of them. men and 10 thousand. more women. In addition, it accounts for about 40 percent of all deaths in men, and more than a half in women. It is similar all over Europe – prof. dr hab. med. Danuta Czarnecka from the Clinic of the Institute of Cardiology of the Jagiellonian University quotes these statistics in an interview with Medonet. So why is the death of a woman as a result of a heart attack unimaginable? Prof. Czarnecka believes that this is the result of poor research methodology. For many years all over the world, data on the risk, symptoms and effectiveness of treatment of heart attacks were collected mainly from male patients. Women, if they were included in the study at all, constituted no more than 20 percent of the group.
Today, a heart attack can as well be called a male problem as well as a female problem. Why is it more and more often attacking just ladies? Perhaps this is the price for women working on an equal footing with men, or rather bullying, in corporations. And often more, because many of them still have to prove that they are fit for the position they hold no less than a colleague. And although we have equal rights, paternity leaves and blogs, in most families women still fall for the second, after the corporate, home “job”. In addition, the research of the Swedish Karolinska Institute shows that after leaving work, after 40 minutes, the level of stress hormones in men returns to normal, and too much cortisol and adrenaline circulates in the blood of women for several hours. This is the first injustice – biological. The second is more frustrating: if a man comes to the hospital with pain behind the sternum, he is usually referred immediately for further diagnosis. It can be different with women. The symptoms of a heart attack take unusual forms. These can be nausea, vomiting, pain in the jaw, pain in the hand – not necessarily in the left, shortness of breath. It seems absurd, and yet this last symptom is sometimes confused by doctors with… neurosis. Rare emergency room doctors, but more often first contact doctors. Especially if a woman talks about her ailments expressively, and also mentions how much stress she gets in everyday life. Then he has a good chance that if he finds a cardiologist, it will take a roundabout route – through the psychiatrist’s office.
Although the risk factors are identical for both sexes (not surprisingly: smoking, diabetes, hypertension, low physical activity, and now it would be necessary to add smog), neglect in this matter takes more vengeance on women, e.g. diabetes increases the risk of a heart attack three times in men and four times in women, similarly with hypertension.
Unfortunately, it is not only doctors who fail to recognize the symptoms of women’s heart problems. They also underestimate them themselves. Why? Perhaps this is the price for the roles played by women again – only this time not those related to professional emancipation, but to the lack of emancipation in home life. The iconic mother – Poland cares for the health of her husband and children, and forgets about hers. This is clearly visible in commercials: a woman takes care not only of children, but also a man like a child, persuading him to eat healthy and take medications on a regular basis. We can curse the producers of advertisements that they perpetuate the stereotypes and wait for them to wake up, but they create these “works” not by accident… they portray the most popular model of life. The only thing left for us to do in this situation is to appeal to men: Gentlemen, take care of fiancées, wives, daughters, mothers, so that they avoid heart problems. Then there will be a real Force Awakens.
The article is a part of the campaign “Zadbaj o miłości” and was also published in the daily “Rzeczpospolita”.