Ep. 220: The Leading Cause of Death in Women
Guest: Lara Boyd, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health
Imagine this: someone grabs their chest and collapses from a heart attack.
What did you envision? Did you imagine a middle aged overweight guy? Probably! Did you for even a nanosecond imagine a woman? Probably not!
Why didn’t you imagine a woman? Well, let’s face it, we’re sexists when we think about heart attacks and strokes – we think it’s a male problem.
As a result of that stereotyping, heart disease research has focused primarily on men. The other side of that stereotyping is that women are not as vulnerable to heart disease. That, however, is simply not true.
Heart disease is an equal opportunity affliction that manifests itself differently in women than it does in men. So not only has female heart disease been under-researched, it is also frequently misdiagnosed and women are over-dying as a result.
Dr Lara Boyd of the Centre for Brain Health says this misconception has created a gap in how women are treated when they complain of symptoms and there is a chasm in the amount of research devoted to women’s cardiovascular health.
We invited Dr Boyd to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the facts and myths of heart disease and women and where we go from here.
