Heart disease risk higher for women who have these unhealthy lifestyle habits

It’s long been known that certain lifestyle and health factors increase the risk of heart disease — but a new study highlights that they could affect women more than men.Eight specific habits — diet, sleep, physical activity, smoking, body mass index, blood glucose, lipids and blood pressure — appear to have twice the impact on heart health risk for women compared to men, found researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.The findings will be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session in Chicago on March 29-31, 2025.The study included data from over 175,000 Canadian adults without existing heart conditions who enrolled in the Ontario Health Study between 2009 and 2017, according to a press release.The researchers analyzed the participants’ scores for the eight risk factors and then tracked the incidence of seven heart disease outcomes over an 11-year period.Those outcomes included heart attack, stroke, unstable angina (chest pain that results from restricted blood flow to the heart), peripheral arterial disease (narrowed blood vessels in the arms or legs), heart failure and coronary revascularization (procedures to open blocked arteries) and cardiovascular death, the release stated.Overall, more women were found to have ideal health (9.1% compared to 4.8% of men). They were also less likely to have poor health (21.9% compared to 30.5% of men).Women who had poor health, however, were shown to have nearly five times the risk of heart disease than women with ideal health, the study found.In comparison, men with poor health had 2.5 times the risk of heart disease compared to men with ideal health. Among women with intermediate health, there was a 2.3 times higher risk than for those with ideal health, compared to 1.6 times the risk for men with intermediate health.“For the same level of health, our study shows that the increase in risk [related to each factor] is higher in women than in men — it’s not o...