Women: Lower estrogen drives up heart risk
Estrogen is a hormone that plays important and various roles in the body. It is essential for reproductive health, bone development, mood management, and also heart health.
If you’re a woman, you probably know that when menopause occurs—usually between the ages of 50 and 54—estrogen levels drop. And, as we already mentioned, this hormone plays an important role in heart health.
“With a decline in estrogen levels, several things happen in a woman’s body,” says cardiologist Kavitha Chinnaiyan, MD, director of Cardiac Imaging Research and associate professor of medicine at Beaumont School of Medicine.
She continues to explain that “many of these changes result in the development of risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.”
