Because women live longer than men and are less likely to suffer a fatal heart attack or stroke in the prime of life, many people have assumed that women were somehow immune to cardiovascular diseases. The fact is, women are just as vulnerable as men to heart attacks and stroke.
Heart attacks are by far the leading cause of death in women as well as in men.
According to the American Heart Association, each year cardiovascular diseases claim the lives of about 448,000 men and 478,000 women. This is more than 10 times the number who die of breast cancer, yet women consistently voice much more concern over the latter. Complaints of chest pains, shortness of breath, and other classic symptoms of coronary artery disease are more likely to be dismissed as psychological or trivial when they occur in women than in men. Similarly, more women die of strokes every year than men, even though the stroke rate among men is higher. No one knows why women do not fare as well as men when they are stricken with a heart attack or stroke.