The incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) is much lower in younger women than in age‐matched men, and this has led to the popular misconception that cardiovascular disease is a disease of men, and is relatively rare in women. This, however, is not the case. The incidence of CHD may be much lower in young women than in men of the same age, up to the age of 65, with the risk of dying from CHD being 3.5‐fold higher in men than in women. After age 65, however, the risk equalizes for both sexes.1 Overall, CHD is a very significant cause of morbidity and mortality amongst women. The reasons for the lower incidence of CHD in younger women are unclear. Because of the increased incidence with age, it has been proposed that oestrogen may be responsible for the protective effects seen amongst younger women. Loss of this protection after menopause may therefore be responsible for the increased CHD incidence at older age. However, Heller et al. 2 examined the mortality data of the Registrar General of England and Wales over a 5‐year period (1970–4) and suggested that there was no real acceleration in the increase of CHD death in women aged over 50 years (that is, postmenopausal women) but that the rate of increase for men over the age of 50 was in fact lower than in younger men. They therefore proposed that around the age of 50 years it was the men who may have lost some ‘protective’ factor, thus putting them at higher risk of CHD, rather than the increased CHD risk amongst women being due to their loss of a ‘protective’ factor! This viewpoint is contrary to popular belief, but highlights the uncertainty over the problem of cardiovascular risk in women, ranging from what the actual …