Health educator Layna Berman explains the mechanisms behind heart symptoms in women and offers nonpharmaceutical suggestions for both genders on how to protect their hearts.

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SHOW INTRODUCTION Today’s show about women and heart disease is dedicated to two very talented Pacifica journalists who both died of early heart attacks a month apart: Andrea Lewis and Gina Hotta, both 52 years old. You are missed. If you go to any conventional medical site looking for information about women and heart disease, you will read warnings about HRT (although they say that birth control pills are just fine) and about high cholesterol (although no study has ever shown a relationship between cholesterol and heart disease in women). Heart disease is described as the number one killer of women. This despite the fact that much of the heart disease risk for women can be attributed to constant breast cancer screenings using ionizing radiation which is known to cause ischemic heart disease. So many things left out. Today I want to counter the convention on women and heart disease. Stay tuned.