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When you go through menopause, you're dealing with fatigue, hot flashes, insomnia—all sorts of not-so-fun symptoms. But those lower levels of estrogen that occur afterward can affect your heart, too: According to the Mayo Clinic, it's a significant risk factor for heart disease

To keep your heart in peak condition, it's important to make sure you're staying active. According to the CDC, that means trying to hit 2 hours and 30 minutes of exercise every week—even if that just means a quickie workout after you get home at night. (That factors out to only about 21 minutes a day, by the way. Anyone can do it!)

In movies and on TV, heart attacks are very theatrical: someone usually grabs their chest and falls over. In reality, things are a lot different for women. Typically, a heart attack simply involves experiencing chest pain or discomfort, upper back pain, heartburn, nausea, and extreme fatigue, says the CDC. A lot of the time, you might not even know you're having one. That's why it's better to be safe than sorry if you're feeling any signs.

There's plenty of reasons why to keep your heart healthy, but this may be the biggest: If you don't, it could kill you. Even though heart disease is more often associated with men, it's the leading cause of death for U.S. women, causing 1 in 4 female deaths per year, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).