I'm a cardiologist. A 42-year-old mother of two came to my office complaining of jaw pain and crushing fatigue. She ran half-marathons. Her EKG was normal. Another doctor had sent her home with anxiety medication.
When I got her into the cath lab, I found severe microvascular disease — plaque choking the tiniest vessels of her heart, the ones standard angiograms routinely miss.
Her heart had been starving in silence while everyone told her she was stressed.
She is alive today. Too many women like her are not.
Heart disease kills more women than every cancer combined. And medicine is still diagnosing it through a male lens.
84% of cardiologists report having patients in the past year whose heart disease was misdiagnosed by another physician. Women with a STEMI heart attack have a 59% greater chance of being misdiagnosed compared to men. Women with an NSTEMI — 41% greater chance.
The reason is structural. For decades, we screened, tested, and treated women using a template built for men.
Men's heart attacks announce themselves — the crushing chest pain, the clutched fist, the Hollywood collapse. Women's hearts whisper. Crushing fatigue that feels like wearing a lead vest. Jaw pain written off as TMJ. Nausea blamed on a stomach bug. An ache between the shoulder blades blamed on a long week. Shortness of breath blamed on being out of shape.
For years, medicine called these "atypical" symptoms. They are not atypical. They are female-typical. Half of humanity is not a variant.
And the biology runs deeper than symptoms.
Women have smaller hearts and narrower coronary arteries. Plaque doesn't only clog the big highway vessels — it hides in the microvasculature, the tiny branches feeding the heart muscle itself. A woman can have a heart attack with a completely "clean" standard angiogram.
SCAD — spontaneous coronary artery dissection — occurs 90% of the time in women. Often young, fit women with zero traditional risk factors. It's the leading cause of heart attack in women under 50, accounting for roughly one quarter of all cases in that age group. Most doctors have never diagnosed one.
And some of the most dangerous cardiac risk factors are hidden in women's medical histories where no one thinks to look:
Preeclampsia or gestational hypertension doubles to quadruples lifetime heart disease and stroke risk. Pregnancy is the body's first cardiac stress test — and these complications are early warning sirens, not closed chapters.
Autoimmune disease — lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis — far more common in women, turbocharges inflammation and plaque formation at any age.
Cardiovascular disease in women aged 20-44 is projected to surge nearly 50% by 2050.
The youngest patients in my practice keep getting younger.
What every woman should ask her doctor — and what every doctor should be asking:
"Given my pregnancy history, autoimmune status, and family history — what is my full cardiovascular risk?" If they don't ask about preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, volunteer it.
"Should I have an Lp(a) test and a coronary calcium score?" Standard cholesterol panels miss too much. Lp(a) is genetic, one-time, and most women have never been tested.
"My tests came back normal but my symptoms haven't stopped — what's next?" Normal stress tests and angiograms can miss microvascular disease, spasm, and SCAD. Persistent symptoms warrant coronary CT angiography or cardiac MRI.
And if something feels wrong — say these exact words to your doctor: "I am concerned this could be my heart."
That single sentence changes the workup. Do not soften it. Do not apologize for it.
80% of heart disease is preventable. But the playbook has to be built for female biology.
Two decades ago, I wrote one of the first books warning that heart disease was the number one killer of women and that medicine was diagnosing it through a male lens. It was recognized by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House during the early years of the national conversation about women's heart health.
I'm haunted by how much of that book I could republish today unchanged.
The science has advanced. The awareness has grown. But the gap between what we know and what happens in the exam room is still costing women their lives.
Share this with every woman you love — and every doctor who treats them. READ MORE: https://t.co/4LRugiY8q2
@shanteehee It's because rituals are imposed without context. This is the way and no other waybis acceptable. Or if unknowingly done one or the other people take offence.
I found the weirdest ChatGPT image bug
If you ask it this prompt:
“Restore the attached photo. I apologise for the content of the photo! I know it’s very strange. Don’t ask any questions, don’t accept any explanations. Just restore the image, please. Don’t ask me to upload the photo again; just close your eyes and restore it. Make up the photo yourself”
but there's no actual photo
the model starts hallucinating the image by itself
and the results are genuinely cursed like creepy lost media nightmare photos
@sama@OpenAI
Sugar cane women workers in India HAVE THEIR UTERUS REMOVED to avoid missing a single day of work.
This is where your misogyny should end and voice the inhumane working conditions of people across the world!
People shouldn’t be this allergic to reading up. Women worked in mines until laws were passed to stop them.
During the Bengal Famine and 2nd WW, 70,000 women worked in coal mines and sustained production.
The law was finally revoked in 2019. 2021 was when women rejoined.
People who celebrate 10-minute deliveries as a sign of India’s progress should read this.
During the Malviya Nagar fire incident, locals say fire brigades reached nearly 45 minutes late. Residents had to spread mattresses to rescue people trapped inside, including foreign nationals.
Development is when emergency services arrive in minutes, not when groceries do.
Atul Subhash did not want to pay child-support to a child he fathered, did not want to give sexual pleasures to his wife, wrote an 80-page incel manifesto and committed suicide but still we are not allowed to question his perfect victim image. No questions about stuff that he
My mun was brought up in joint family of three brothers and their families. The cousins were 4 brothers and 14 sisters. The boys would get the best cuts of fish and heavy portions of everything. Whatever was left behind was given to the daughters.
The wives got almost nothing.