Cardiovascular Disease Symptoms
and Risk Factors

Cardiovascular Disease in Women: Risk Factors and Prevention Section 7

According to numerous studies, the risk of illness can increase due to psychological job demands when workers have poor social support and do not have the ability to influence decisions.

Women that have jobs that often require overtime, considered to be 10 or more hours a week, are at greater risk of being hospitalized for myocardial infarction then other women. Men are not at a greater risk unless they have extreme hours of overtime.

This difference may be due to women’s responsibilities at home, such as childcare, which are likely to suffer from overtime hours. It may also be because women more often than men have jobs that they do not enjoy.

Cardiovascular health and work environment factors have both similarities and differences for men and women. The differences indicate that more gender-specific research is necessary. (Theorell, 1991, p.187-200)

Having relationships with other people has repeatedly been shown to improve health. Marriage is the central relationship in most people’s lives and married people have been shown to have lower morbidity and mortality rates due to heart attack, among other conditions, than unmarried people.

In a summary of the literature on marriage and health issues by Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton, it was found repeatedly that being married, as opposed to unmarried, was more beneficial to the health of men then women.

Single women have a 50% greater mortality then married women while men have a 250% greater mortality then married men. (Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton)

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