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June 30th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda FRIDAY, June 29 (HealthDay News) — The hot flashes that bedevil so
many women as they enter menopause don’t appear to be linked to poorer
heart health, new research suggests.
The exception to that finding may be if hot flashes persist for many
years after the onset of menopause, or if the hot flashes start many years
after menopause begins.
“It’s very reassuring for the women who have the most common pattern of
hot flashes. There is no signal of an increased cardiovascular risk for
women who have hot flashes around the time of menopause,” said study
author Dr. Emily Szmuilowicz, assistant professor of medicine at
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “But there
may be a suggestion of increased cardiovascular risk among the smaller
group of women who experience these symptoms for the first time many years
after menopause or who have them for many years.”
The study was presented this week at the Endocrine Society annual
meeting in Houston.
A woman is considered to be in menopause one year after her last
menstrual cycle. As much as 85 percent of women, by some estimates, will
experience hot flashes during that time — and possibly in the years
leading up to it, said Dr. Cynthia Stuenkel, a menopause expert and
clinical professor of medicine at the University of California-San
Diego.
“We know that hot flashes are a very normal experience for women going
through menopause,” Stuenkel said.
Much of the underlying physiology of hot flashes remains a mystery,
experts say. But in the past few years, some research suggests hot flashes
may be associated with higher risks of cardiovascular disease.
A study published last year based on data from the Women’s Health
Initiative study — a large, long-term look at postmenopausal women —
found that those who had late-onset hot flashes were at a higher risk of
heart attacks and death during the study period. (Women who had hot
flashes around the time of menopause faced no added risk, and perhaps even
a lower risk of heart attack than women with no hot flashes.)
The current study was a follow-up to the prior study, measuring
biological markers to try to determine what the underlying mechanism might
be. Szmuilowicz and her colleagues examined data on nearly 60,000
postmenopausal woman with an average age of 64 who were asked about hot
flashes, including when they started getting them and how many years they
persisted.
Compared to women who didn’t have hot flashes, women who got hot
flashes around the time of menopause onset were no more likely to have
certain markers associated with a heightened risk of heart disease. Those
markers include blood-pressure levels and white-blood-cell counts, which
can be a sign of inflammation, Szmuilowicz said.
But women whose hot flashes emerged an average of 14 years after
menopause and those who had persistent hot flashes (those who had them
both around menopause and many years later) had higher blood-pressure
readings and higher white-blood-cell counts.
Women who had only early hot flashes also had better readings on a
marker for blood vessel function than women who didn’t have hot flashes,
although there was no difference in women with late or persistent hot
flashes.
In women with persistent hot flashes, blood glucose and insulin levels
also were higher, which may indicate diabetes risk. There was no
association between diabetes risk factors and women in any of the other
hot-flash groups.
Although the science on hot flashes remains murky, experts said women
experiencing persistent or late-onset hot flashes may be wise to try to
lower their risk for heart disease and stroke, including keeping blood
pressure and weight in check, exercising and eating a healthy diet.
“Menopause is a good time for women to step back and take stock of
their health,” Stuenkel said. “There are a whole lot of things women can
due to decrease their risk.”
Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and
conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a
peer-reviewed journal.
More information
WomensHealth.gov has more on menopause.
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