Heart disease risk higher for women who have these unhealthy lifestyle habits
It’s long been known that certain lifestyle and health factors increase the risk of heart disease — but a new study highlights that they could affect women more than men.
Eight specific habits — diet, sleep, physical activity, smoking, body mass index, blood glucose, lipids and blood pressure — appear to have twice the impact on heart health risk for women compared to men, found researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
The findings will be presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session in Chicago on March 29-31, 2025.
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The study included data from over 175,000 Canadian adults without existing heart conditions who enrolled in the Ontario Health Study between 2009 and 2017, according to a press release.
The researchers analyzed the participants’ scores for the eight risk factors and then tracked the incidence of seven heart disease outcomes over an 11-year period.
Those outcomes included heart attack, stroke, unstable angina (chest pain that results from restricted blood flow to the heart), peripheral arterial disease (narrowed blood vessels in the arms or legs), heart failure and coronary revascularization (procedures to open blocked arteries) and cardiovascular death, the release stated.
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Overall, more women were found to have ideal health (9.1% compared to 4.8% of men).
They were also less likely to have poor health (21.9% compared to 30.5% of men).
Women who had poor health, however, were shown to have nearly five times the risk of heart disease than women with ideal health, the study found.
In comparison, men with poor health had 2.5 times the risk of heart disease compared to men with ideal health.
Among women with intermediate health, there was a 2.3 times higher risk than for those with ideal health, compared to 1.6 times the risk for men with intermediate health.
"For the same level of health, our study shows that the increase in risk [related to each factor] is higher in women than in men — it's not one-size-fits-all," said lead author Maneesh Sud, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of medicine, interventional cardiologist and clinician scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, in the release.
"We found that women tend to have better health than men, but the impact on outcomes is different. The combination of these factors has a bigger impact in women than it does in men."
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This is a new finding that hasn’t been seen in other studies, the researcher added.
Based on the study findings, the researchers concluded that "sex-specific screening or risk assessment approaches" could more accurately predict people’s heart disease risk.
Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health and Fox News' senior medical analyst, was not involved in the study, but shared his insights on the possible reasons for the findings.
"I think the reason women are being found to be more susceptible to heart disease is because of particular milestone stresses in their lives that men don’t share, which include dramatic hormonal shifts that can bear directly on cardiac function," he told Fox News Digital.
Those milestones may include pregnancy, childbirth and menopause, the doctor noted.
"Keep in mind that estrogen is in some respects cardio-protective, and it drops dramatically with menopause," Siegel said. "And at the same time, cholesterol (a cardiac risk factor) increases, as may weight."
"Overall, women tended to have better health than men, with better diets, blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure, but those in intermediate health had a higher risk of heart problems," he went on.
Due to the study’s limited population, "only certain conclusions can be drawn," Siegel added.
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Dr. Bradley Serwer, a Maryland-based cardiologist and chief medical officer at VitalSolution, an Ingenovis Health company that offers cardiovascular and anesthesiology services to hospitals nationwide, said there has been a need for studies specifically designed to focus on women’s cardiovascular risk.
"For many years, we have falsely assumed that traditional cardiovascular risk factors affected populations similarly," Serwer, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital.
"We know that premenopausal women have a lower age-adjusted cardiovascular risk, but this catches up after menopause."
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More research is needed to understand the underlying reasons for this phenomenon, the cardiologist noted.
"Is it solely attributable to the protective effects of estrogen, or are there other unrecognized contributors? I commend the authors of this study for their contributions, as they further challenge our conventional approaches to primary prevention in women."