Early Menopause Does Not Increase Usual Heart Disease Risks, Study Finds

A new study upends the conventional belief that women who experience early menopause (45 years old or younger) have more traditional cardiovascular health issues later on than women who develop menopause closer to the normal age. The study, published in February 2020 in the journal Heart, found that women who go through menopause at an earlier age don’t later have more troublesome blood pressure levels, blood cholesterol, or other traditional heart disease risk factors compared with women who go through menopause later in life.

That sounds like good news. But it doesn’t mean that a woman who stops her periods early—or indeed any woman—doesn’t have to worry about her heart. Heart disease remains the number one killer of women. And prior studies have shown that those who enter menopause before age 45 have higher rates of dying from heart disease in later life than others.

Read more from Everyday Health, by Meryl Davids Landau, Early Menopause Does Not Increase Usual Heart Disease Risks, Study Finds

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