Health between men and women

Men and women are different from a biological point of view, due to genetic and physiological factors, so that the risk of certain diseases, their manifestations and their severity can vary between men and women. Also, some of the differences are not so much for a biological reason as for a social and gender issue. Let's get to know health differences between men and women.

• Women have a longer life expectancy than men, yet they have higher morbidity and disability.
• heart disease is more common in men, while osteoporosis is more common in them.
• Oncological diseases affect men more, while mental diseases, such as anxiety, are more frequent in women.

Women have a longer life expectancy than men, yet they have higher morbidity and disability. Socialization patterns, family roles, obligations, job expectations and types of occupation that generate physical and emotional overload have a marked influence on health, generating chronic disorders that extend throughout life without causing death. .

Health differences between men and women

• heart disease such as angina pectoris or heart attack are more common in men than in women. However, mortality is higher in women than in men, partly due to the smaller caliber of the coronary arteries and partly due to the disappearance of the cardioprotective role of estrogens when the establishment of the disease.
• smoking it produces greater damage to the endothelium of women after menopause, as estrogenic protection ceases upon reaching menopause.
• Women's tolerance for alcohol is lower, in part because they tend to weigh less than average men, and they produce less of the gastric enzymes that metabolize alcohol.
• Osteoporosis It is more common in women than in men, since the absorption of calcium and its fixation in the bones decreases with age, and they do so drastically by reducing estrogens in the blood after menopause.
• Autoimmune diseases they are more frequent in women than in men.
• Oncological diseasesOverall, they are more frequent in men than in women.
• Depression and anxiety they are more frequent in women than in men, in part due to a lower production of serotonin.
• Women are at higher risk of experiencing sexual violence and having unwanted unprotected sex, making them more susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases. Obviously this is not a biological difference but a question of gender and social roles.
• Given the greater life expectancy of women, they have a higher prevalence of suffering from vision loss, hearing loss, depression and dementias that are not treated.

Social differences

Although it is evident that there are biological differences between men and women that will condition their health, it is important to emphasize the socioeconomic level is one of the main determinants of the state of health, the behaviors related to the Health and the use of health services. Women suffer a greater risk of social exclusion than men, which will reduce their access to healthcare, which will cause their health to be decimated, not due to biological but social causes.

Unfortunately, the obstacles to better health for women are not so much technical and medical as social or political, where access to education, the labor market and wages play an important role. Fortunately, this inequality in Spain may not be so marked, but we cannot forget that, unfortunately, our so-called first world is not the majority.