Here�s a question that will cause some controversy in the household: who has the higher pain threshold? Men or women? Go�
The gender debate has been discussed, disputed and deliberated in its many form for centuries. In fact you could even link it back to Adam and Eve several thousand years ago. The men vs women pain debate is still on-going and was discussed at the European Federation of IASP� chapters (EFIC) congress in Hamburg just last week.
More than 4,000 experts from all over the world gathered to discuss the latest developments in pain research and therapy for the different genders. It seems it has been proved that men and women suffer differently when it comes to pain. Not only do both genders experience different pain thresholds, they also respond differently to treatment. This was what happened at the congress in Hamburg: a call for the end of unisex medicine.
And as well as we women experiencing pain less, some other recent research found that women may have stronger immune systems all because of a single chromosome, our Xtra X chromosome. This could explain why women tend to live longer than men.
So who does feel the most amount of pain? Dr Oras who attended the congress said that women tend to lament about their pain, which usually aches for a shorter time but is more intense than the pain men feel. It was also said that men do not complain. I�m not so sure that �fact� is true. Anyone heard of man-flu being complained about on more than one occasion?
Dr. Alabas carried out an investigation, with her team, into the relationship between sex-related stereotypic attributions of pain and experimentally-induced ischemic and mechanical pain in 51 healthy participants and revealed that one of the main reasons for the difference in pain thresholds between men and women is the universal impact of gender roles on pain responses.
The demand now is for adjusted treatments for men and women so that they are able to deal with the different responses their bodies have when it comes to pain.
I�m sure many women would invite men to give childbirth a go as an effective test of pain thresholds but if the information is accurate, perhaps men wouldn�t moan anyway?
Are women really tougher than men? Read news report on the genetic basis of man-flu.
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