Three Major Health Problems: How Women and Men Differ

Three Major Health Problems: How Women and Men Differ

It’s well-known that women tend to outlive men. But women make up for their longer lives with a higher risk of chronic ailments, including arthritis and depression.

Gender differences exist for many other health problems, too. Here are three major areas in which women and men differ:

Diabetes
After menopause, many women gain excess weight around their middles. This may account for why women are more likely than men to develop type 2 diabetes.

Excess fat—particularly around the waist—seems to affect the way the body uses insulin, the hormone related to diabetes.

Alcohol-Related Problems
Women are less likely than men to become alcoholics. But, because their bodies process and absorb alcohol differently than men’s, it takes less alcohol to impair women. Women are also more likely than men to develop alcoholic liver disease.

More bad news: Heavy drinking increases breast cancer risk. Even moderate drinking may increase a woman’s chance of getting the disease.

Experts believe alcohol may increase the amount of estrogen in a woman’s body. High estrogen levels seem to fuel breast cancer.

Heart Disease
A man has a higher risk of heart disease than a woman until she reaches menopause. Then, levels of the heart-protective hormone estrogen decrease. An older woman’s risk of heart disease equals that of an older man’s.

For unknown reasons, women are less likely than men to suffer chest pain during a heart attack. Instead, many women report heaviness in their shoulders, back, or elsewhere. Plus, women are also more likely to experience nausea, vomiting, or breathlessness during a heart attack.

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