- Health disparities for sexual minorities are complex and are linked to myriad factors.
- These disparities stem from being exposed to different levels of particular stressors and different experiences accessing healthcare and socioeconomic circumstances compared to heterosexual people.
- Influences on cardiovascular health are also multifactorial and include many environmental and lifestyle factors, including diet, alcohol, smoking, stress, and poverty.
- A recent analysis assessed the potential impact of these factors on cardiovascular health and showed that lesbian and bisexual women have lower cardiovascular health scores than their heterosexual counterparts.
Health disparities affecting gay, lesbian, and bisexual people have been acknowledged for decades, but the extent and causes are unclear.
One area that has gained interest recently is cardiovascular health.
To investigate the difference in exposure to cardiovascular risk factors between sexual orientation groups, researchers analyzed data from a cohort of 169,434 individuals who lived across 21 cities in France.
They used a health score developed by the American Heart Association called the
This score had been an update of a previous score developed by the American Heart Association called the Life’s Essential 7 score, which didn’t include data on sleep. Researchers noted that the Life’s Essential 8 score had not yet been used to investigate the cardiovascular health risk of sexual minorities.
The researchers found that after adjustment for confounders, such as level of education, lesbian or bisexual women had lower cardiovascular health scores and hence worse heart health than heterosexual women.
Their results were…
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