We tend to think of heart disease as a man's health problem, but it affects equal numbers of men and women, and it kills one out of every two women.
Women tend to develop heart disease later in life than men do.
Doctors at UT Southwestern Medical Center say this is because female hormones provide some protection against heart disease. At menopause, though, women lose that advantage and are just as likely to develop heart disease and have heart attacks as men are. Many women with heart disease went undiagnosed and untreated. This may be due, in part, to the fact that heart attacks in women don't always have the same symptoms they do in men. Instead of the crushing chest pain that usually signals a heart attack, women may have nausea, heartburn and stomach pain.