Your Heart Score Means Something Different If You're a Woman

Key Takeaways

• ✦A coronary artery calcium (CAC) score of zero — long read as reassuring — may underestimate risk in women more than in men, because women tend to develop a different kind of plaque buildup that the scan doesn't catch as well.
• ✦Not all dietary fats do the same thing to your cholesterol or your gut bacteria. In postmenopausal women with mildly elevated cholesterol, stearic acid (found in beef and cocoa butter) behaved differently from palmitic acid (common in palm oil and processed food) and oleic acid (olive oil) — and the gut microbiome changes were distinct for each.
• ✦The oleic acid group — essentially the olive oil diet — showed the most favorable cholesterol and gut microbiome profile in this trial, though the study was small and a secondary analysis, so treat it as direction-pointing, not settled.
• ✦A new paper on menopause education gaps found that OB-GYN residency programs still aren't consistently training doctors on menopause management — which helps explain why so many women report being dismissed or misdiagnosed.
• ✦These gaps in physician training have real downstream effects: women who don't get adequate menopause care are also less likely to get proactive cardiovascular risk conversations at the time they need them most.