Women are Not Small Men

Book excerpt: The single greatest health risk for women today-more than stroke and all cancers "combined-is heart disease. Yet despite this documented fact, heart disease is still considered primarily a "male problem," with the result that far too many women go untreated by doctors and are misinformed by the existing literature. Now, with this groundbreaking new book, Dr. Nieca Goldberg, the nation's leading expert on women's heart disease, has at last remedied this situation. "Women "Are Not Small Men presents detailed, decade-by-decade programs that give women at any age OF life the facts and the guidance they need to recognize, treat, and prevent heart disease. In the course of her work as founder and chief of the Women's Heart Program at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, Dr. Goldberg has come to a startling realization: Women experience heart disease in a fundamentally different way than men do. The physiology of a woman's heart attack is not the same as a man's, the symptoms of heart disease and signs of impending heart attack differ for women, and once heart disease has been recognized, women often do not get the treatment and medications they need. In this accessible book, she uses these critical insights to build a complete treatment and prevention program geared to the unique needs of women. Engagingly written and grounded in compelling true patient stories, the book presents comprehensive instructions on what you can do to maintain or improve your heart health, including how to spot the warning signs of heart disease, the exercises and diet to follow for prevention and recovery, how to assess risk factors, techniques for reducing stress, the truth about estrogen and hormonereplacement therapy, which supplements and herbal remedies really work, and how to become your own advocate in dealing with the medical profession. Dr. Nieca Goldberg has made it her mission to give women the treatment and information they deserve. Now she makes her research, prevention program, and recovery strategies accessible to all women. Authoritative, caring, and up-to-the-minute, this is destined to become the women's health book of the new millennium.