Over lunch today, a good friend and I were talking about how many of our girlfriends were breast cancer survivors or currently under treatment for cancer. Between the two of us, we counted nine women, between the ages of 45 and 51.
My friend, who happens to be a doctor of medicine, said, “I can understand about heart disease, hypertension or diabetes at our age, but there seems to be a spike in breast cancer cases, as well.”
I relayed to her what another friend had told me, that an oncologist had noticed that it was very common among her breast cancer patients to have experienced a major, life-changing stressor from six months to one year prior to diagnosis.
By life-changing stressor, we mean either a major loss through death, divorce, a relationship breaking up; job changes or displacement; a reversal of fortunes; anything that places the woman in a state of profound sadness, worry or anxiety.
Extreme stress truly wreaks havoc on the immune system, both for men and women. However, women in particular seem to be much more prone to falling ill or acquiring a disease when subjected to chronic stress.
Nature versus nurture
I was reminded of a 2014 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association (“Associations of Stressful Life Events and Social Strain With Incident Cardiovascular Disease in the Women’s Health Initiative”) by Kiarri Kershaw, Ph.D at Northwestern University, which sought to find out the correlation of nature versus nurture in the development of heart disease and stroke in women.
The study involved 82,000 women over a period of 16 years.
Kiershaw and her team tried to understand the role that life stressors and social strains played in the development of heart and brain disease. Among the questions asked by the researchers were the following:
Did the person have a spouse who died?
Did the person have a spouse with a serious illness?
Did a close friend or relative die?
Was the person or someone close having major problems with money?
Was the person or someone close going through a divorce or a breakup?
Was the person experiencing a significant conflict with children, siblings or grandchildren?
Did the person, a spouse or someone close lose a job?
Was the person or someone close a victim of physical, verbal or emotional abuse?
Each woman who answered with a yes scored one point.
With regard to levels of social strain, the subjects were asked the following questions.
How many of the people who are important to you:
1) Get on your nerves?
2) Ask too much of you?
3) Do not include you?
4) Try to get you to do things you do not want to do?
Each question was ranked between 1 (none) and 5 (all). If the composite score was seven or more, these women were identified as having a high level of social strain. A low level of social strain was a score of four or less.
What Kiershaw and her team discovered validates the importance of understanding how the environment and the people we relate to influence our heart and brain disease risk.
Women who experienced high levels of stressful life events were 12 times more likely to develop coronary artery disease.
They were 14 times more likely to experience a stroke.
These risks were independent of education level, marital status or family income.
Women who experienced high levels of stressful life events were five times more likely to develop coronary artery disease, even when accounting for all the traditional risk factors. They were also nine times more likely to have a stroke.
Social strain
Women who experienced high levels of social strain were:
12 times more likely to develop coronary artery disease
10 times more likely to experience a stroke
These risks were independent of education level, marital status or family income.
If you are a woman reading this, try to answer the above questions, and if you feel that you fall into the high-risk category, then you need to take action because if these conditions persist, it’s highly likely that you may be setting yourself up for coronary artery disease or a stroke.
The risks, of course, double or triple if you have a family history of certain types of cancer, heart or brain disease, or if you smoke, eat an unhealthy diet and lack exercise.
I always like to say that, after 40, the warranty begins to wear out. My cardiologist friend, Dr. Leni Iboleon Dy, chair of the Philippine Heart Association Council on Women’s Cardiovascular Health, says that after menopause, it becomes a level playing field for men and women with regards to heart disease and stroke because women lose the protective benefit of estrogen.
Thus, the time to take action to relieve the stressors in one’s life, or to learn better coping skills, must take place long before menopause or perimenopause kicks in. Learn to say no. Learn the value of self-care.
Jack Kornfeld wrote, “If your compassion doesn’t include yourself, it is incomplete.”
Taking better care of yourself translates to taking better care of your heart, your brain, or your breasts, for that matter.
E-mail the author at storiesbykate @gmail.com; follow her on Twitter @cathybabao
