Women experience more stress than men after heart attacks. Heart disease is the number one killer among older men and women. Unfortunately, young women who have heart attacks also seem to be at higher risk for problems afterwards. New research out this week may have found out one reason why. “The researchers compared 2,397 women and 1,175 men under age 55 who were hospitalized in the U.S., Spain or Australia with a heart attack. The severity of the heart attacks was similar for women and men. While hospitalized, participants answered questions about their recent stress levels. One month later, researchers re-interviewed them and assessed their recovery.” Women tended to be more stressed during these first interviews and more often experienced family conflict, a major personal injury, illness or death of a family member over the past year. According to the researchers, “women tend to have lower financial resources than men and are often faced with more demands for family care, which may explain their higher stress. Women in the study also had more diabetes, lung disease, kidney problems, depression, cancer and previous heart problems.” The researchers don’t know why women might be in worse health or how exactly stress is causing worse recovery

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