Women Are Not Small Men: Life-Saving Strategies for Preventing and Healing Heart Disease in Women

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 hormone replacement 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.

"[A]n excellent addition to the women's health shelf." Publishers Weekly

"[L]ucid, sympathetic, and eminently readable." Library Journal

One out of every two women will die of heart disease. It is the single greatest health risk for women today—more than stroke and all cancers combined. 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 require. Now here are detailed, age-specific programs that give women the facts and the guidance they need to recognize, treat, and prevent heart disease, including

• How you can rate your risk of heart disease

• The effects of menopause on your heart

• Risk factors you can change—starting today

• A heart healthy exercise plan that works for you

• A complete guide to heart healthy supplements

• The truth about hormone replacement therapy and the heart

• Recovering from a heart attack or surgery

Authoritative, caring, and up-to-the-minute, this is destined to become the women’s health book of the new millennium.

Nieca Goldberg, M.D., is the chief of cardiac rehabilitation and chief of the Women’s Heart Program, a unique cardiac rehabilitation and prevention program for women that she created at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She is also medical director of the cardio-rehab program and the May Center for Health, Fitness, and Sport at the 92nd Street Y. In New York magazine’s “Best Doctors” of 1999 and 2000 lists Dr. Goldberg was among the top ten Hall of Fame of physicians.