Diabetes triples a woman’s odds of developing heart disease, and women with diabetes are more likely to die from heart disease than diabetic men are. Women with diabetes are at higher risk because of high blood pressure, lower HDL and more abdominal fat.

“Diabetes trumps the heart protective benefits of estrogen and does away with the 10- to 15-year break women normally have for heart disease development,” says Robert Eckel, MD, an endocrinologist at the University of Colorado, in Aurora. Because two thirds of women die of either a heart ­attack or a stroke, Eckel adds, doctors should treat every patient who has diabetes as aggressively as they do a heart attack survivor.

Originally published in the May 2010 issue of More.