WILMINGTON, DE, January 12, 2005 – If you
knew that, as a woman, your heart disease was more likely
to be misdiagnosed than if you were a man, would you be
more mindful of working with your health care provider on
your diagnosis? Gender-specific medicine is the science
that discovers how disease affects men and women differently.
To improve women’s awareness about the personal health
impact of gender differences, health education company LLuminari
(Loo·min·R·ee) is launching a new national
movement called “Embracing Women’s Health,”
to help highlight newly appreciated and important differences
between the sexes that could impact the ways we prevent,
diagnose and treat illness.
“We’ve practiced medicine as though a woman’s
breasts and reproductive organs are the only things that
made her unique and as though her heart, brain and every
other part of her body were identical to those of a man,”
said Marianne J. Legato, MD, FACP, founder and director
of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia
University and a LLuminari health expert. “This has
been an intellectual mistake of astounding proportions.”
Research has confirmed significant variations in how major
diseases first appear and develop differently in men and
women. Dr. Legato noted that heart disease is a prime example.
She says that the differences in the risk, symptoms and
consequences of coronary artery disease between men and
women
show that women may die needlessly due to misdiagnosis and
even after a heart attack women are treated less aggressively
than men.
Dr. Legato said that similar gender-specific disparities
exist in several therapeutic health areas. She said that
in 2002, 11.6 million females in America had asthma compared
to 8.5 million males. Women make more visits to the emergency
room with asthma attacks. Some women are uniquely susceptible
to worsening of the disease just before they menstruate
because of a difference in the way hormone fluxes influence
the way they metabolize medicine given to them to prevent
an attack. Women with diabetes have a four- to six-fold
increase in risk for developing coronary artery disease
compared with diabetic men, while a man’s risk doubles
if he has the disease. Dr. Legato pointed out that men’s
brains are richer in serotonin than women’s, possibly
explaining the fact that women are twice as likely to suffer
from major depression as are men.
“We’re in a new medical era, where we are concentrating
not just on men’s health or even simply on women’s
health: we are concentrating on the differences between
the ways in which both sexes function normally and the ways
in which they experience the same diseases. The new research
is reaping enormous rewards for both men and women; if we
can answer the questions we are asking today we’ll
be able to improve the health of both genders,” said
Dr. Legato.
The Goal of Embracing Women’s Health Movement
“We believe the lack of awareness about gender-specific
health differences put both men and women at a disadvantage.
Both sexes can benefit from knowing how their gender impacts
their health. For too long, we have looked at health in
a homogenous way,” said Elizabeth Browning, CEO, LLuminari.
“The goal of Embracing Women’s Health is to
create a grassroots, gender-specific health education movement
by people sharing their knowledge and inspiration with each
other,” Browning explained. “Women readily share
health experiences with each other. LLuminari is simply
providing them a place to connect, access to the country’s
top experts and the opportunity to become their own health
advocates.”
The Online Community of www.embracingwomenshealth.com
The multi-year Embracing Women’s Health national
education movement is made possible through a unique web
site – www.embracingwomenshealth.com
– that links women together in a sisterhood of learning,
sharing and inspiration. The web site has been developed
by the LLuminari experts, a team of the country’s
most trusted physicians who are also great communicators.
Browning said the community web experience is key to making
Embracing Women’s Health become a national women’s
health education movement. Each visitor to the website can
mark her geographic location on a master tracking map so
that all users get a real-time sense of the growing national
community on several health and wellness subjects.
The Embracing Women’s Health website is recruiting
LLuminari Health Champions. Members of the movement can
become Health Champions by sharing inspiring personal stories
and earn the opportunity to begin their own Web Log (“BLOG”)
on the site. The site also provides message boards for Q&A
sharing and an online newsletter.
LLuminari® HealthStars™
“Each member of our LLuminari network of health
experts and physicians has earned national acclaim for
their respective specialties,” Browning explained. “Collectively
they have published more than 75 books. They have also
appeared on
Oprah, CNN, The Today Show and all major television
networks.”
Members of the LLuminari HealthStars™ network of
health experts and physicians include: Byllye Y. Avery,
BA, MEd; Lynne Perry-Bottinger, MD, FACC; Ben Carson, MD;
Margaret Caudill-Slosberg, MD, MPH, PhD; Alice D. Domar,
PhD; Loretta LaRoche; Marianne J. Legato, MD, FACS; Susan
M. Love, MD, FACS; M. Ellen Mahoney, MD, FACS; JoAnn E.
Manson, MD, DrPH; Miriam E. Nelson, PhD; Mehmet C. Oz, MD,
FACS; Hope A. Ricciotti, MD; Norman E. Rosenthal, MD; Pepper
Schwartz, PhD; Nancy Snyderman, MD, FACS; Janet E. Taylor,
MD; and Susan L. Troyan, MD, FACS.
LLuminari: A History of Commitment to Women’s
Health
The introduction of www.embracingwomenshealth.com
is the latest milestone in the ongoing LLuminari mission
to address gender-based health issues. In 2004, LLuminari
announced the findings of Creating Healthy Corporate
Cultures for Both Genders, a landmark workplace health
study it commissioned.
That study indicated that gender-based differences in workplace
values can create a culture of underlying stress and conflict
that affects the physical and emotional health of both women
and men.
LLuminari (Loo·min·R·ee), based in
Wilmington, Delaware, is a health education company comprised
of nationally known physicians and health experts committed
to women’s health, both in the workplace and at home.
Named to evoke the idea of illumination, LLuminari physicians
and health experts translate complex medical information
into powerful and comprehensive formats and points-of-view
that people understand and can act upon to improve personal
and family health.
More information about LLuminari and Embracing Women’s
Health is available at www.LLuminari.com
and www.embracingwomenshealth.com.
Support for Embracing Women’s Health provided by GlaxoSmithKline.
# # #
Editor Note: Embracing Women’s
Health Press Center at web site –
www.embracingwomenshealth.com
– for facts, background and downloadable images.
