The Overlooked Heart Risk Women Aren’t Warned About

Hormone education is reshaping patient outcomes during American Heart Month, and Beyond

February is American Heart Month, yet one of the most significant drivers of women’s cardiovascular risk often goes undiscussed in exam rooms: the hormonal transition into perimenopause and menopause.

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for women in the United States, surpassing all forms of cancer combined. Still, many women are never told that declining estrogen and progesterone during midlife can directly influence cholesterol balance, vascular function, inflammation, insulin sensitivity, and overall cardiac health. Instead, symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, nausea, anxiety, or jaw pain are frequently dismissed as stress, aging, or “just menopause.”

That gap between risk and recognition is where BHRT Training Academy is focused, and where its founder, Donna White, has built a fast-growing healthcare education business aimed at improving long-term patient outcomes.

White, author of Hormone Makeover, has spent years working at the intersection of hormone science, provider education, and patient safety. Rather than targeting consumers, BHRT Training Academy trains physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and clinical teams on evidence-based bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), with a growing emphasis on cardiovascular prevention during midlife.

“Menopause is not just a quality-of-life issue, it’s a cardiovascular inflection point,” White explains. “When providers understand the hormone-heart connection, they can intervene earlier, ask better questions, and prevent problems before they become chronic or catastrophic.”

Menopause: A Missed Window for Prevention

Research shows that estrogen plays a critical role in maintaining healthy blood vessels, managing LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, and regulating inflammation. As estrogen levels decline, women experience changes that can quietly accelerate plaque buildup, insulin resistance, and vascular stiffness, often years before a cardiac event occurs.

Yet traditional medical training has historically devoted limited time to menopause, hormone optimization, or sex-specific cardiovascular risk. As a result, many providers are well-trained to respond to heart attacks but less equipped to prevent them during the hormonal transitions that precede disease.

BHRT Training Academy addresses this gap by reframing menopause as a preventive care window, not merely a symptom-management phase. Its programs focus on helping providers interpret labs more effectively, understand the hormone-cholesterol connection, recognize atypical cardiac symptoms in women, and communicate risk clearly to patients.

Education as a Business and a Safety Strategy

From a business perspective, hormone education is rapidly becoming a differentiator in clinical practice. Demand for menopause care has surged as women seek informed providers who can address fatigue, weight gain, sleep disruption, mood changes, and cardiovascular concerns in a connected, evidence-based way.

Practices that lack proper training risk more than missed opportunities, they face compliance challenges, inconsistent outcomes, and patient dissatisfaction. By contrast, clinics investing in structured hormone education are seeing stronger patient retention, better outcomes, and clearer care protocols.

White’s work is supported clinically by BHRT Training Academy’s Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Deborah Matthews, MD, a nationally recognized expert in hormone and menopause medicine. Together, they emphasize standards, safety, and provider accountability, elements increasingly important as hormone therapy enters the mainstream conversation.

Changing Outcomes by Changing Training

As American Heart Month shines a spotlight on prevention, BHRT Training Academy is helping shift the narrative around women’s health and heart health, from reactive treatment to proactive education.

“When providers understand how hormones influence cardiovascular risk, women get better care,” White says. “That’s not just good medicine, it’s good business, and it’s long overdue.”

By elevating hormone education within clinical training, BHRT Training Academy is helping healthcare organizations close a critical gap, one that has quietly impacted women’s heart health for decades.