JP Stroke Foundation

Heart health is an important topic of discussion.  Whether it concerns diagnosis, symptoms, onset of the disease, or treatment of the disease, one issue is almost widely accepted worldwide. This issue is regarding the differences that men and women experience when it comes to disease stigmatization. This stigmatization, or simply stigma, can manifest itself in various ways. For example, the frequency of visits to the doctor, discussion of symptoms with friends, or accepting treatment or care from others are behaviours that can be impacted by the underlying stigma in healthcare. We all know someone who refuses to see a doctor, and hopefully we can agree that is wrong. Out of those who see a doctor, men are much less likely, as compared to women, to “bother” their doctor with minor symptoms [2]. Men are also more likely to have heart problems in the future, which can be worsened if they fail to seek help. A series of risk factors, in addition to the stigmatization of diseases can lead to an increased chance of having heart disease; these are issues that need to be explored.

The differences in heart health can be explained by a variety of reasons, one of those being the stigmatization of diseases. When talking about the stigma that affects the health of an individual, this often refers to the sense of “weakness” associated with visiting a doctor. In fact, men visited and consulted with their doctors, or primary care physicians, approximately 30% less than women [4]. Though this statistic is only observed in individuals aged 16-60 years old, this can be significant when trying to understand the overall course of heart disease. When we visit a doctor’s clinic for a check-up, the doctor asks us about our daily habits like drinking, smoking, and exercise among other lifestyle choices. Poor habits have adverse effects on our current and future selves. In particular, smoking has been observed to cause a 30-40% increase risk for future coronary heart disease in younger individuals. With the addition of diabetes, hypertension, and obesity this percentage can increase and further worsen health conditions [1].  These additional factors are referred to as risk factors, which have an impact on the onset of a disease for younger and older individuals. As we add more risk factors, we observe a greater effect on heart disease (or any disease). This is an extremely important reason why visiting the doctor is essential for being healthy later in life.

This leads us to the question; how can we reduce this stigma that is almost disproportionately affecting men?  Researchers are constantly working to answer this question. One of the big ways to reduce stigma is through academic intervention. By implementing changes in our school curriculum we can slowly begin to integrate a different mentality in society. Education would be critical to reducing stigmas for men as the younger generations would now understand that healthcare is equally important for both sexes [2].

As discussed earlier, risk factors are factors that have the potential to contribute to certain diseases. These factors include drinking, drugs, hypertension (high blood pressure), and smoking. Interestingly, men tend to perform more risk-taking behaviours than women. The increased heart disease prevalence in men can be partly due to this risk-taking behaviour [3]. If men are drinking or smoking more, this contributes to the onset and aggression of the disease in question, which further promotes the gender gap that is observed for heart diseases. The important part of this discussion to note here is that this increased risk-taking behaviour in addition to the decreased visits to the doctor lead to diseases that are not being treated and that can lead to irreversible damage.

Author: Jaskaran Gill

References

[1] Aggarwal, A., Srivastava, S., & Velmurugan, M. (2016). Newer perspectives of coronary artery disease in young. World journal of cardiology, 8(12), 728–734. https://doi.org/10.4330/wjc.v8.i12.728

[2] Banks I. (2001). No man’s land: men, illness, and the NHS. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 323(7320), 1058–1060. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.323.7320.1058

[3] Spence, J. D., & Pilote, L. (2015). Importance of sex and gender in atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerosis, 241(1), 208–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2015.04.806 

[4] Wang, Y., Hunt, K., Nazareth, I., Freemantle, N., & Petersen, I. (2013). Do men consult less than women? An analysis of routinely collected UK general practice data. BMJ open, 3(8), e003320. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-003320