Women Are Not Small Men: Life-Saving Strategies for Preventing and Healing Heart Disease in Women

Nieca Goldberg, M.D., is the chief of cardiac rehabilitation and chief of the Women’s Heart Program, a unique cardiac rehabilitation and prevention program for women that she created at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She is also medical director of the cardio-rehab program and the May Center for Health, Fitness, and Sport at the 92nd Street Y. InNew Yorkmagazine’s “Best Doctors” of 1999 and 2000 lists Dr. Goldberg was among the top ten Hall of Fame more >>

Nieca Goldberg, M.D., is the chief of cardiac rehabilitation and chief of the Women’s Heart Program, a unique cardiac rehabilitation and prevention program for women that she created at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She is also medical director of the cardio-rehab program and the May Center for Health, Fitness, and Sport at the 92nd Street Y. InNew Yorkmagazine’s “Best Doctors” of 1999 and 2000 lists Dr. Goldberg was among the top ten Hall of Fame of physicians.Women’s Hearts Are Different

As a woman and a cardiologist, I’ve written this book to help you improve the health of the most important muscle in your body—your heart. Knowing that heart disease has taken over the lives of 8 million women in the United States, I want to show you how taking care of yourself today will help you to have a stronger heart and a healthier life for years to come. You can prevent a heart attack from happening to you—even if it runs in your family—by following the Women’s Healthy Heart Program that I present in this book. If you’ve had a heart attack already, this program will show how to keep it from happening again. I have designed this unique cardiac prevention and treatment program specifically for women.

Until very recently, no book like this could have been written, because all the knowledge, research, and treatments concerning heart disease were based on findings in men. For too many years, the medical establishment was ignorant of women’s unique needs and physiology and looked upon women as simply “small men.”

But women are not small men. It is now understood that our physiology is very different from that of men, especially when it comes to heart disease. Our hearts are proportionately smaller, and when we develop the first signs and symptoms of heart disease, we are usually ten years older than men. Consequently, to be effective, heart disease prevention and treatment programs for women must be different from those for men.

If you’re like most women, you probably have a Pap smear every year and, especially if you’re over forty, a mammogram every year or two. I’m sure you’ve heard all the scare stories about breast and cervical cancer, and you know that these two simple tests can reduce your risk for them. But you may not realize that heart ailments disable and kill more women than all cancers combined.

Five years ago I established the Women’s Heart Program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City to deal with that reality. Now that baby boomer women are entering menopause—the heart disease years—by the millions, I want to spread the word that heart disease is a woman’s greatest health threat.

I’m not interested only in the condition of your heart; I want to help you become healthier as a whole person: healthier in your mind and entire body as well. That means you need to learn better ways to deal with stress, which takes a toll on your overall health and can set you up for heart disease as well as high blood pressure. As a woman working almost exclusively with female patients for over a decade, I know that we often tend to put off seeing to our own health needs in favor of seeing to the needs of those close to us. In this book, I’ll help you figure out some ways you can make time to take care of yourself, which will help you have a stronger heart and a healthier life in general. You’ll also learn to recognize unhealthy behaviors and replace them with healthy ones.

Perhaps you’ve already been diagnosed with heart disease, and you’re feeling overwhelmed and frightened. This book is for you too. I’ll tell you about the latest research on how to keep your disease under control and even—in some cases of high cholesterol—reverse its course. And if you’ve already had a heart attack, this bo << less