Emily M. Abramsohn, MPH
Emily M. Abramsohn, MPH, public health researcher, University of Chicago. Her study was published in Journal of the American Heart Association.
If you suffer a heart attack, your doctor is likely to give you all sorts of guidelines about what is and is not safe when it comes to diet, exercise, work, travel and more.
And if you’re a man, there’s a good chance that your doctor also will tell you whether it’s safe to have sex again.
But if you’re a woman? Don’t count on your doctor to initiate that important discussion about physical intimacy—because with female heart attack patients, a new study shows, physicians are strangely mum on the topic of sex. That’s a crying shame, because their silence is leading to lots of unnecessary confusion and fear in the bedroom for women—and for their partners.
For this study, researchers turned to a registry of heart attack survivors to investigate how women tended to fare sexually in the aftermath of their heart attacks. They sent letters to invite participation, and then they started dialing. The respondents were women between the ages of 43 and 75. Generally they rated their health as good to very good. All were in monogamous relationships, either marriage or a long-term same-sex partnership.
The women were asked a number of questions including, “Has your doctor ever talked to you about sex after having a heart attack?”—and the answer to that query raised red flags. Here’s why…
Both the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology recommend that physicians counsel their patients—notice that’s “patients,” not “male patients”—about resuming sex after a heart attack. Yet based on the results of this survey, it seems that doctors just aren’t following the guidelines. And that’s really too bad, because such conversations would most likely put women (and their partners) at ease. Reason: The AHA says that sex is generally safe after a heart attack provided that a patient is in stable condition and has no complications…and that heart attacks rarely occur during sex because sexual activity is usually relatively short in duration.
One caveat, dear readers: Research shows that when a heart attack does occur during sex, it is usually during extramarital sex, not sex with one’s spouse. For more on that topic, click here.
What you can do: First, for more background info, read AHA’s article Sex and Heart Disease. Then, to find out whether sex is safe for you, prepare a list of questions for your doctor and insist on frank, detailed answers that take your individual situation into account—and don’t leave the doctor’s office until all your questions have been answered to your satisfaction.