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How gender affects your health

TNN | Last updated on - Jun 11, 2018, 11:37 IST

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How gender affects your health

HOW GENDER AFFECTS YOUR HEALTH: Is your male friend any different than you? Yes, of course as he doesn't have breasts and a vagina like you. But is that all? No, that’s not all. You will be surprised to know that apart from the reproductive differences, all tissues in your body show some or the other sex-biased activity. This difference wasn’t fully publicized until 1990, when the book 'The Female Heart: The Truth About Women & Coronary Artery Disease' explained how heart attack can be strikingly different in men and women.

We all know what a heart attack feels like; pain in the left arm along with discomfort in the chest. But more than half the women who have had a heart attack reported that they experienced no chest and arm pain. They feel symptoms like pain in the neck, back, jaw, stomach and feel nauseated, light headed or fatigued. This is just one of the many conditions with a strong differences between male and female. Here are five such other conditions that affect the two sexes in different ways.

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Migraine headaches

MIGRAINE HEADACHES: Women once again win the race as the ratio of women and men getting a migraine headache is 3:1. Female hormones have a bigger role to play in migraine headaches and this can be one probable reason why the symptoms worsen around their periods. The different brain structures of men and women also play a major role in this. A female brain is more easily triggered to get migraine pain than a man's.

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Stroke

STROKE: Men have a higher risk of stroke than women until the age of 85. Post 85, the risk increases for women. The outcome of a stroke may also differ in a man and a woman. Stroke in women often result in poor quality of life and are fatal.

Apart from the common symptoms that include numbness in face, legs and arms, women also experience symptoms like hiccups, chest pain, exhaustion and nausea.

Tip: Women should drop the idea of having birth control pills as these pills increase the chances of stroke in women over the age of 35. Women who smoke, have diabetes and high blood pressure also have higher chances of getting affected with stroke.

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Depression

DEPRESSION: At some point in their life, 20 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men experience depression. More women attempt suicide than men but more men often die from the attempt. Feeling of worthlessness, guilt, sadness, loss of interest or hopelessness are some signs of depression.

Depression again is different for men and women. This depends on factors like different upbringing of boys and girls, different brain structures and differences in social status. Women have symptoms like weight gain, too much sleep and anxiety while men have symptoms like weight loss, insomnia and irritability.

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Colorectal cancer

COLORECTAL CANCER: The percentage of risk for both men and women is same for colorectal cancer but the mortality percentage is lower in women as compared to men. A 2013 review in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine showed that women tend to develop colorectal cancer five years later than men. Also, the placement of tumour is on the right side in women and on the left in men. The placement definitely plays a role as a tumour on the right side takes more time to grow and become visible. This is why diagnosis in women takes time as compared to men. But more women survive this because their body responds differently to different chemical treatments.

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Alzheimer’s disease

ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE: Alzheimer’s is the premature deterioration of the brain that results in dementia. With more than 5 million people suffering from Alzheimer’s, women make up 64 per cent of this figure. Also, the disease progresses more quickly in women as compared to men.

The 2014 Annals of Neurology study showed that women who carry the gene variant ApoE4 have 80 per cent chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease while men with the same gene have only 27 per cent chances of developing it.

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How gender affects your health