A cardiologist explains how menopause increases heart disease risk through hormonal changes that raise LDL, lower HDL, and worsen weight gain and blood sugar. She argues for hormone therapy instead of only treating symptoms downstream with beta blockers or statins.
Today is World Menopause Day, and you're probably wondering why, as a cardiologist, I care. And I care for two reasons. One, I'm also a primary care doctor, so I deal with menopause all the time for my primary care patients. And number two, and probably more interestingly to all of you, is that as a cardiologist, I deal with the symptoms of menopause as a cardiologist all the time because people come to me, women come to me having various symptoms that are, can be a direct result of their menopause and their fall in estrogen. And one of those, the biggest one is probably palpitations secondary to anxiety. So postmenopausal women tend to get a lot more anxiety. It causes them to have palpitations and they come in making sure their heart is okay. Also, what menopause can do is increase the risk factors for cardiovascular events, weight gain, hemoglobin A1c, which is a marker of diabetes, as well as lipid profiles. The L- LDL will go up, which is a bad cholesterol. The HDL, the good cholesterol, will go down. And so I deal with a lot of this in my patients as well, because sometimes it's better to treat the menopause, and a lot of times it can be better to treat the menopause than to just put a Band-Aid on it, treating the LDL, treating the palpitations with like beta blockers, when a lot of times we can cure the problem with just hormone therapy, which the vast majority of women are candidates for. So that's why I care, and happy World Menopause Day.
