The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 5, 2012

Official News page 5


REAL LIFE NEWS: WOMEN HURT MORE THAN MEN

by Hazed

Speaking of pain...

Everybody Hurts, says the REM song (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijZRCIrTgQc&ob=av3e). But it seems that women feel pain more intensely than men. A study shows that when a woman falls ill, her pain is likely to be more intense than a man's.

A study published in the Journal of Pain (great title!) was one of the largest to examine sex differences in the pain perception of humans. It looked at a whole range of diseases, such as diabetes, arthritis and respiratory infections.

Of course, since pain is subjective, the only way to know how much pain someone is suffering is to ask them. Pain is also affected by general mood and whether the person takes pain killers.

Researcher Linda Liu, a doctoral student in Stanford University Biomedical Informatics program, said, "Whatever the reason, I think it's important to be aware of this pain discrepancy between men and women and look into it further."

She pointed out that many studies in animals do not include females, or fail to report the sex of the animals, so in future researchers should analyze their results to see if sex differences in pain may be present.

In humans, studies looking at differences in reported pain between genders have compared people with a given condition who say they are in pain - but haven't looked at how intense the pain is.

The reason why women would experience more intense pain than men is not known. Suggestions are hormones, genetics and psychological factors. It's also possible that pain systems work differently in men and women, or that women experience more severe forms of disease than men.

Whatever the reason, further research is needed to explore this fascinating area.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=women-feel-pain-more-intensely&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20120124


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