NitzaMD

08/28/2026

Perimenopause, the phase before menopause, can begin in your late 30s or early 40s. During this time, estrogen doesn't just decline; it fluctuates unpredictably, spiking and dropping. This instability affects your brain's regulation of temperature, sleep, stress response, and heart rate, impacting your body's overall coordination.

08/27/2026

For most of my career, hormones and hearts were treated like two different departments. Different specialists, different appointments, different conversations.

Your body never got that memo.
This one is not about hot flashes. It is about arteries.

Bring one question to your next appointment: what is my cardiovascular risk?

Follow for the cardiology side of menopause. Save this and share it with your mother, daughter, sister, friend, spouse, or any woman you love.

08/26/2026

Feeling more irritable, tired, or noticing heart palpitations? These aren't random. Early evaluation of your cardiometabolic profile during perimenopause is crucial. Know your fasting glucose, A1c, insulin, lipids, blood pressure, and body composition like visceral fat and muscle mass. Understanding these signals is the first step to managing your health.

08/24/2026

Perimenopause is more than just changing cycles. Hormonal shifts impact your brain, metabolism, and cardiovascular system. Waking at night? It's often hormonal instability, not just stress. And heart disease risks can begin during your transition, long before menopause.

08/23/2026

This weekend I moved my daughter into her dorm.
I sat in the car after and let myself feel all of it.
Then I remembered the phrase I have carried for years.
We are not empty nesters.
We are bird launchers.

She is going to open doors for women I will never meet.

My job now is to still be here, strong, when she does.

Mamá, the energy you gave them for eighteen years is available to you. Spend some of it on your own heart.

Follow for the cardiology side of menopause. Save this and share it with your mother, daughter, sister, friend, spouse, or any woman you love.

Educational content only. Not medical advice. Sources: SWAN, Matthews et al., JACC 2009; The Menopause Society; American Heart Association.

08/22/2026

At a baby shower everybody asks the right questions. That is not the problem. The problem is that twenty years later, in a cardiology office, the questions stop.

Preeclampsia. High blood pressure in pregnancy. It’s not just a complication of pregnancy. They are early signals about the heart and the vessels. And they still matter decades later.

Your pregnancy history belongs in your cardiology chart. Bring it. Say it out loud. And if nobody asks you for it, ask them why.

Ask what they measured.

I Am You. Every woman deserves to be believed about her own heart.

08/21/2026

What you're feeling isn't random. It's your body signaling change, the beginning of prevention. Don't wait for a diagnosis. Listen to those early whispers. Ignoring them has long-term consequences for your heart.

08/20/2026

08/19/2026

Could perimenopause be signaling more than hormonal shifts? For many women in their 40s, subtle symptoms like sleep disturbances and fatigue are early markers of increasing cardiovascular risk. Listen to your body's story.

08/19/2026

I have asked this question in clinic for years, and I still watch women pause. No one ever told them it counted.

Your pregnancies are cardiology data. They always were.

New this month in the European Heart Journal.

Follow for the cardiology side of menopause. Save this and share it with your mother, daughter, sister, friend, spouse, or any woman you love.