When someone has a heart attack, it is a devastating, life changing event. But did you know that men and women tend to be impacted differently by heart attacks? According to research from the Mayo Clinic, there are about 1.5 million heart attacks that happen every year in the United States. But when it comes to exactly who has a heart attack, there are a couple main factors that can help doctors to make better predictions of who is at risk. Sex, age, and lifestyle tend to be the biggest indicators.
Of these three, we can’t do too much about sex and age. Sex and gender are two very things. Regardless of what you may identify as, in the vast majority of instances, you are the biological sex that you were born with. And whether you were born as a male or a female can make a big difference when it comes to heart attack risk. Men tend to suffer from more acute heart attacks each year than women do. Unfortunately, guys tend to be more at risk of heart attack than women are.
Age also plays a role in how likely someone is to have a heart attack. The older someone is, the higher their risk. Because women tend to live longer than men, researchers actually found that women in this age group suffer more frequently from heart attacks than men do.
This doesn’t mean that women have it easy when it comes to heart disease. Women under the age of 65 were more likely to die in the hospital because of their heart attack than men were. Additionally, the research showed that women were a lot more likely to suffer from other cardiovascular related illnesses. These included hypertension, lung disease, atrial fibrillation, and stroke. Women were also more likely to suffer from diabetes.
Regardless of whether your older loved ones are male or female, a heart attack (and any other cardiovascular related illness) can be a devastating event. It can change everything all in a single moment. When someone has a heart attack, they may require some sort of care or supervision for the remainder of their life. Luckily, there are options beyond the nursing home when it comes to senior care. If you’re not sure what type of care is best for your loved one’s specific situation, please consult with their doctor to help ensure that they get all of the support and care that they need.
There are things that can be done to prevent or lower the risk of a future heart attack. If you’re unsure of what kind of lifestyle changes can be made, please get in touch with a doctor. This is always the best place to start when looking to make healthy changes in your life. However, if you’ve already done this, there are a number of good resources on the web that you can use to help plan and track the progress that you’ve made. We’ve included several of these in this blog. Check out this article, or this one, from the Mayo Clinic.
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