161 - Jill’s experience of heart attacks and hormones

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

Dr Louise Newson

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Medicine

4.8 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Until a few years ago, Jill was in denial about her age, the menopause and what that meant for her future health. She had worked for 30 years as a fitness instructor and sports massage therapist; she was incredibly fit and had never given her heart health a moment’s thought. This abruptly changed in 2021 when Jill had sudden and severe pains in her chest and after some doubt and misdiagnoses by the medical team in A and E, she was found to have had at least one significant heart attack, possibly more. Since then, Jill has had ongoing intermittent chest pain, especially when having hot flushes, and she realised her continued cardiac symptoms were potentially linked to her changing hormones. Dr Louise Newson explains the link with estrogen deficiency and cardiac symptoms, and the increased risk of heart attacks after menopause. Together they discuss gender bias in heart research, the difficulties diagnosing heart attacks in women, the possible reasons for poorer outcomes compared to men and the cardiovascular benefits of HRT. Jill’s 3 tips to women if worried about your heart: Listen to your body, you know it best Do your own research, such as balance-menopause.com, Blood Pressure UK, British Heart Foundation websites Have someone with you at appointments, or over the phone if not in person If you know there’s something wrong with your heart, ask for a troponin blood test You can read Jill’s story here

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr. Louise Newsome and welcome to my podcast. I'm a GP and menopause specialist and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon. I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause support app called Balance.
0:29.9	On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based
0:36.5	information and advice about both the perimenopause and the
0:40.9	menopause. So today on my podcast, I've got someone called Jill, who yet again, like many of my
0:50.4	guests, I've never met real life, but I have read her story. And really, it resonated with
0:56.8	so many stories that I've heard over the years from the clinic. So I'm very grateful that she's
1:01.1	come to share her story and talk more about how we can improve awareness about the perimenopause
1:07.7	and menopause in other areas of medicine, including cardiology. So welcome,
1:13.6	Jill, today. Thanks ever so much. Thank you. And it's such a privilege. It's so exciting.
1:19.1	I get to meet and speak to Dr. Louise Newsom. It's brilliant. Oh, well, there isn't really much
1:24.3	special about me. I've just got a mouth and I want to try and help more women.
1:29.1	But it's a joint. We're doing it together with lots of people, including yourself. So tell me a bit about
1:34.6	you, if you don't mind. And if I'd said to you a few years ago, you're going to come onto a menopause
1:40.2	podcast, you probably would have said no, maybe, would you? And it's not lost on me
1:45.1	the irony that I never ever wanted anybody to know my age. That, you know, when I was
1:53.1	internet dating, I never gave my, I always knocked a few years off. Yeah. And I would never,
2:00.0	I just blocked out the menopause, completely and utterly
2:04.5	blocked it out. And I think that's one of the big difficulties in spreading information about
2:10.5	it, because even someone like me who's an anatomy nerd, I don't want to know I'm getting old.
2:17.3	No, of course.
2:18.2	No, absolutely.
2:19.7	And you're right.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr Louise Newson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dr Louise Newson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.