From reasons to be cheerful:

When Carolyn Thomas suffered her first heart attack in 2008, she was in her fifties, a distance runner and as fit as can be. Yet the doctor in the ER diagnosed her with acid reflux, sent her home without treatment and told her she simply needed to rest.

“I felt so embarrassed for having made a big fuss over nothing that when my symptoms later returned, there was no way I was going back to that ER for help,” says Thomas, a PR manager in Victoria, Canada.

Two weeks later, she had another massive heart attack that proved nearly fatal. The first doctor had not realized that Thomas was in the midst of a life-threatening health crisis.

Men suffer heart diseases more frequently, but for women, they are more often fatal. One reason has now been well-documented: Doctors primarily train with the symptoms of middle-aged male patients and often miss the signs of the “Eve-attack.”