Coronary disease: women are at risk later in life.

There are two misconceptions among American women about their health risks: that heart disease is just a "middle-aged man's problem" and that their biggest health threat is cancer. Neither of these are true, say researchers at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Heart disease is the number-one killer among post-menopausal women, not breast cancer or other tumors, they point out. In fact, about 67% of females encounter some form of heart disease, while around 11% develop breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. In addition, cardiovascular disease by no means limits itself to males--it simply occurs later in life for women than it does in men.

"Every year, nearly 250,000 women die from heart disease--which is actually higher than the rate for men in a number of age groups," explains Maureen Lowery, a cardiologist who specializes in treating women with heart disease. "What makes that even more distressing is that women go to the doctor much more often than men. The medical community knows that "heart disease is a real problem for women.... The challenge now is to get the patient information and general public's perception to match our medical facts and research findings."

Estrogen is the key to why women don't encounter cardiovascular disease as often during their 40s, when their male counterparts tend to begin experiencing problems. That's because estrogen protects women by relaxing blood vessels and influencing cholesterol. Since they are inherently smaller, so are their arteries. Accordingly, keeping blood vessels relaxed and flowing freely is especially important. Estrogen also increases the good, or HDL, cholesterol while decreasing the LDL, or bad, cholesterol. "Consequently...