Recent years have seen some major changes in women’s health
care.
Recent years have seen some major changes in women’s health care. For example, in 2002 the National Institutes on Health (NIH) terminated its study on the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) three years early because they found that HRT increased the risk of stroke, blood clots, breast cancer and heart attacks. This past March, the NIH cancelled the last component of this landmark clinical trial – which involved women who took only estrogen – because of a slightly increased risk of stroke.
This may seem like a step back in women’s health care, but it just means that more work needs to be done. Research into women’s health care has been slow to develop. The federal government criticized the NIH in 1990 for devoting only 13 percent of its research funds to women’s health and excluding women from most medical studies involving diseases, treatments and drugs. In 1992, the NIH mandated that any research carried out on diseases that affected both men and women had to include women in significant numbers, and in 1991, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services established the Office on Women’s Health (OWH) to improve the health of American women.
These are important advances because women are at a higher risk than men for many chronic diseases and conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. Heart disease is still the leading cause of death for both American men and women, but it kills over 50,000 more women than men each year, according to the Society for Women’s Health Research.
Researchers are also finding that men and women may experience different symptoms during or just before a heart attack. For men, the most common sign of heart attack is chest pain, according to the American Heart Association. For women, more common signs are anxiety, unexplained fatigue, sleep disturbance, shortness of breath and indigestion.
For these reasons, and many more, it is important for women to give their own health the same attention they give to that of their loved ones. As a Mother’s Day reminder and in time for Women’s Health Week, May 9-15, PacifiCare’s Women Health Solutions offers the following personal health management recommendations.
• Visit your doctor. Schedule regular visits with your doctor. Your doctor can help coordinate appointments with specialists and schedule mammograms or tests for illnesses like heart disease, which kills 10 times as many women as breast cancer.
• Stay informed. The Internet has become a primary source of health care information for women. The Society for Women’s Health Research (www.womenshealth.org) and the Office on Women’s Health (www.4woman.gov/owh/) are good places to start. They provide straightforward information on the unique health care needs of women.
• Become engaged. An important part of good health is for women to become active participants in their own health care decisions. While the majority of medical and pharmaceutical research has traditionally been done on men, it’s important to be aware that there are many biological differences between men and women that call for different approaches to prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Also, in some areas such as menopause treatment, new information is coming out very rapidly, and previously held beliefs are being challenged by new studies.
• Live a healthy lifestyle. While women cannot control their family history or age, they can reduce the risk of heart disease by working with their health care providers to evaluate their risk factors and alter their lifestyle habits. Women can work with their doctors to make healthy lifestyle changes, such as quitting smoking, beginning a moderate exercise regimen or choosing fresh fruits and vegetables as diet mainstays to help lower cholesterol and saturated fat.
“Women are the primary caregivers for the entire family, however, as a family nurse practitioner I often see that women don’t always do a good job of taking care of themselves,” said Elaine Smith, family nurse practitioner (FNP-C), CHES, and the clinical head of PacifiCare’s heart disease management programs. “Women can make a difference by making lifestyle changes and seeing their doctors regularly to decrease their risk of disease, so they can enjoy long, healthy lives with their families and loved ones.”
