Common questions
What is an ASCVD risk score?
The ASCVD (atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease) risk estimator calculates your 10-year risk of a heart attack or stroke from factors like age, blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, and diabetes. This page is only an educational checklist — a clinician can run the validated calculation.
Why does heart risk change after menopause?
Estrogen helps keep 'good' HDL cholesterol higher and 'bad' LDL lower. As estrogen falls around menopause, LDL and blood pressure often rise, so a woman's cardiovascular risk increases — making midlife a key time to know your numbers.
Which cholesterol number matters most for women?
Non-HDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B track risk better than LDL alone, and lipoprotein(a) is a largely genetic risk factor that is measured once in a lifetime and almost never ordered. Triglycerides carry more weight in women's risk than in men's.
Does hormone therapy protect the heart?
Timing decides it. Started within ten years of menopause or before age 60, it appears neutral to modestly protective. Started much later, on arteries that already have plaque, it can raise risk. This timing hypothesis is why the original blanket conclusion from the WHI has been substantially revised.
Are heart attack symptoms really different in women?
Often enough to matter. Women more frequently present without crushing chest pain, reporting breathlessness, nausea, unusual fatigue, and back or jaw pain — which is a documented reason women are diagnosed later, treated less aggressively and do worse afterwards.