StrongHER Hearts: Screenings & Conversations That Empower Women

06/11/2026

06/09/2026

Every intake form asks about smoking.

About family history.

About blood pressure and cholesterol.

Almost none of them ask about preeclampsia.
Or gestational diabetes.
Or premature birth.
Or miscarriage.

And yet emerging research suggests that these are not simply pregnancy complications.

They may be the first manifestation of an underlying cardiovascular vulnerability — the first time a woman's microvascular disease announced itself under the physiological stress of pregnancy.

She left the hospital with a healthy baby and a discharge summary.
Nobody told her that what happened during her pregnancy may have been her heart's first warning.

Nobody wrote it in the chart as cardiac history.
Nobody flagged it for her family doctor.

And so it disappeared.

Until it showed up again — years later — in a form the system finally recognized.

Too late.

The question isn't just what risk factors she carries.

The question is whether her pregnancy was already trying to tell us something.

📩 Link in bio.

06/05/2026

Preeclampsia.
Gestational diabetes.
Premature birth.
Miscarriage.

For years these have been called pregnancy complications — events that happened during pregnancy and ended when the pregnancy ended.

Emerging research is telling a different story.

These complications may not just be risk factors for future heart disease.

They may be the first time your heart disease announced itself.
The physiological stress of pregnancy is unlike anything else the body experiences. And for some women — women with an underlying cardiovascular vulnerability that had never shown up on any test — pregnancy is the moment that vulnerability surfaces for the first time.

The pregnancy didn't cause the problem.

It revealed it.

If you've had a complicated pregnancy and no one has ever connected those dots for you —

This is me connecting them.

Your pregnancy history is part of your heart story.

And it deserves to be heard.

- Jim

Join StrongHER Hearts for women's cardiovascular screening, education, and advocacy to prioritize women’s heart health and recognize early warning signs. Community-based cardiovascular education and screening helping women better understand their heart health through awareness, early detection, an...

06/04/2026

A 50% higher misdiagnosis rate after a heart attack.

Let that sit for a moment.

Not a 5% gap. Not a rounding error.

Fifty percent.

That means if a man and a woman walk into an emergency department with the same cardiac event — the woman is statistically far more likely to leave with the wrong diagnosis.

This isn't about bad doctors.
It's about a system built around how men experience cardiac events.

Women often don't match that picture.
So the picture gets interpreted as something else.

Anxiety. Acid reflux. Stress.

And she goes home.

Knowing this number exists doesn't fix the system.
But it might change what you do the next time something doesn't feel right.

Go back.

Ask for more.

You are not overreacting.

— Jim

www.strongherhearts.org

06/02/2026

I posted a video last night about why women's heart disease looks so different from men's.

I made the comparison to Christmas Lights.

The short version — men have large vessel disease. Like the old-style Christmas lights, one light bulb goes out, or one vessel blocks, and the whole string goes dark.

Women predominantly have microvascular disease. Tiny vessels throughout the body. Many small lights all over the body go out, one at a time, but the string stays on.

The damage is still real. It's just harder to see.

That might explain — the vague symptoms that don't have a name— The tests that come back normal — The feeling that something isn't right that persists for months or even years — The cardiac events in women who seemed perfectly healthy — Why that 'something's-not-right' feeling can start long before menopause — Why it feels real, even when no one believes you.

We might be able to explain a lot of things if we started looking at women's hearts the way women actually experience them.

Women need more testing, not less.

Video is on our Instagram — .

Worth two minutes of your time.

— Jim

Join StrongHER Hearts for women's cardiovascular screening, education, and advocacy to prioritize women’s heart health and recognize early warning signs. Community-based cardiovascular education and screening helping women better understand their heart health through awareness, early detection, an...