While maintaining a healthy diet is important for everyone, women may want to be especially careful not to eat a lot of foods with a high glycemic index, as it may place them at a greater risk for developing heart disease.

According to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, consuming carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, which is an indicator for how quickly a food affects blood sugar levels, increases the risk of coronary heart disease in women, but not in males.

It was found that one-fourth of the women studied who had consumed the highest amount of carbohydrates had twice the risk of heart disease compared to those who consumed the least amount. Additionally, approximately 25 percent of the women who consumed foods with the highest glycemic index had 2.24 times greater the risk of heart disease.

“We tentatively suggest that the adverse effects of a high glycemic diet in women are mediated by sex-related differences in lipoprotein and glucose metabolism, but further prospective studies are required to verify a lack of association of a high dietary glycemic load with cardiovascular disease in men,” the authors conclude.