539: The Heart Disease Symptoms Doctors Keep Calling "Atypical" with Dr. Jayne Morgan

Before menopause, our risk of heart disease is HALF what a man's is. Within a few years of our last period, it is EQUAL. By our seventies, it is HIGHER. So why is nobody screening us for it?

This is the conversation midlife women have been waiting for. I sat down with Dr. Jayne Morgan, a research cardiologist and Vice President of Medical Affairs at Hello Heart, who is calling out menopause itself as the most missed opportunity in preventive cardiology. She is the creator of the Stairwell Chronicles, a science communicator who translates complex cardiology into kitchen-table language, and she has spent 25+ years researching what is actually happening to our hearts in midlife.

This is our fourth cardiologist on the show. And she is different. She brings the research, the data, and a fierce honesty about why our healthcare system was built around the male body, and what we do about it now.

WE GO DEEP ON:

• Why menopause is a CARDIOVASCULAR event, not a gynecologic footnote

• The half / equal / greater stat that every midlife woman needs to memorize

• The 37-minute delay women face in the ER for cardiac care, and the exact phrase that gets you seen

• Why hot flashes, night sweats, palpitations, and brain fog are cardiovascular signals, not just inconveniences

• What estrogen actually does for your heart and what happens when it drops, and the 10-year HRT window

• Her take on statins, the online backlash, and what the research actually says about LDL

• What to do if you tried a statin and felt terrible —

• Why it is LDL AND insulin resistance AND inflammation — not one versus the other