Women’s Health Q&A

Eleonora Teplinsky, M.D., head of breast medical oncology at The Valley Hospital Mary C. Collins, M.S.N., A.C.N.P., director of cardiac surgery and cardiac specialty programs at The Valley Hospital Mellie Belvis, A.P.N., advanced nurse practitioner in addiction medicine and primary care at New Bridge Medical Center Darian Eletto, L.P.C., program director at the Acute Partial Hospitalization Program and the LGBTQ+ Health and Wellness Center of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center

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Cristina Giambalvo, director of the midwifery program at The Valley Hospital

WOMEN’S HEALTHQ&A

From vitamin D to menopause, no health topic was off limits for a panel of clinical professionals at BERGEN’s recent Women’s Health & Wellness Event.

We all hunger for information about what’s happening with our bodies—and what could happen. But doctors are busy, the Internet can be contradictory and the health news we hear from our neighbor may be spiked with myth. So imagine the good fortune of the 175 attendees at BERGEN’s Women’s Health & Wellness Event, held in November at Edgewood Country Club in River Vale. They got to pepper a panel of female health experts with questions about health issues they had on their minds—and get the straight dope. Here are highlights:

Q: At what age should we start assessing our risk for cardiovascular issues?

Collins: We advise that both men and women get their first assessment of their cholesterol profile at age 20 and continue to do so yearly. We want to know your risk factors throughout your entire lifespan. It’s important to know your traditional risk factors—high blood pressure, smoking, an unhealthy diet, inactivity—but we want to know your personal history that can put you at an increased risk.

Q: What are some risk factors that put women in particular at risk?

Collins: We really try to focus on genderspecific factors. For example, if you had preeclampsia, preterm labor or gestational diabetes during pregnancy, or if you have an autoimmune disease, your overall risk is higher. Some people might not realize that cardiovascular disease is a major health threat to women through our lifetime, and women outpace men in cardiovascular deaths. You know your dress size, right? You should know some of these other important things too.

Q: How can we raise awareness about this?

Belvis: We have to start at home, teach our children to eat healthy and exercise. Teplinsky: In order to teach teens and kids, you need to go where they are, and that’s social media. They’re on TikTok, Instagram; they’re not coming to these events. I’ll only speak for oncology, but that’s why it’s so important for physicians to be engaged on social media and educating. That’s how we get the message across.

Q: I recently found out that if you had an eating disorder when you were younger, it increases your risk of osteoporosis. What else does it put you at higher risk of?

Eletto: Eating disorders are the secondhighest mortality rate of any mental health diagnosis, second to opioid use disorder. We recognize that eating is part of our day-to-day life, so eating disorders can cause many challenges and long-term damage such as osteoporosis, damage to our throat and teeth from bingeing or purging, cardiovascular health, dietary restrictions or unhealthy eating habits that can impact our digestive systems. Eating disorders are very difficult to get treatment for. It’s much more obtainable if you have private insurance or if you can pay out of pocket. We recently cut the ribbon at The Center for Eating Disorders & Body Positivity at Bergen New Bridge, and we accept Medicare and Medicaid patients, so anybody with an eating disorder can be served. It’s so important to have early intervention with eating disorders because the mortality rate is so high. It’s very much unrecognized, so thank you for asking about it.

Q: Why are we all so low in Vitamin D?

Collins: A source of Vitamin D is sunshine—that’s why it’s called the sunshine vitamin. So some of it is the climate that we live in, because here in the Northeast we spend many of our months inside. Vitamin D is also hard to get from the foods that we eat. But at Valley Hospital’s heart screening program, we test women for D because normal levels of this vitamin have been associated with a better risk profile in terms of cardiovascular disease and breast cancer.

Q: Do all women need to take Vitamin D supplements?

Collins: We recommend that women have a blood test to determine what their [Vitamin D] level is. That should be a part of your primary care evaluation. If it isn’t, you should ask your PCP to do that.

Q: Should we be taking other supplements in addition to Vitamin D? What about multi-vitamins?

Giambalvo: As we age, age 40 and over, we don’t absorb nutrients as well from the foods that we eat, so taking a multivitamin rarely does harm. There’s also good data now that Vitamin K2 helps bone health. We hear a lot about calcium and Vitamin C, but not Vitamin K2. Studies have found that it works almost as well as bisphosphonates, medicines that we take to help maintain bone health.

Q: If we don’t want to take hormones, what are some more natural things that can help alleviate symptoms of menopause?

Giambalvo: The symptoms are quite similar for perimenopause and menopause: show of hands of how many of us can run somebody off a road at any given time! You’re irritable, shorttempered, sweating at night, having hot flashes, your periods are getting longer and shorter. But there are some things you can do. There’s very good evidence in the use of acupuncture for almost everything I just noted. There are certain supplements that 50 percent of the time work and are not harmful for the vast majority of people, including red raspberry leaf tea and primrose oil. Vitamin D is also a good added supplement to help with night sweats and to improve memory, along with CoQ10.

Q: Is there a correlation between uterine fibroids and breast cancer?

Giambalvo: I am not aware of a correlation between myomas and breast cancer. I think they are two independent events. But I know that breast cancer, ovarian cancer and colon cancer tend to be the triad, meaning that if you have one of those cancers, you’re at increased risk for developing the other two. Two things to know about fibroids are that they get smaller during menopause, and they don’t increase your risk for uterine cancer. They make periods more uncomfortable and heavy, but they are benign growths and don’t put you at a higher risk.