How Gender Affects Your Health sana khan

The Surprisingly - Simple Factor - That Could Be - Affecting Your Health

sana khan Everyone knows what a heart attack looks like: You clutch your chest, grab your left arm, then fall to the ground. That is, if you’re a man. But for a woman, most of us know the symptoms can be strikingly different: In fact, half of women report experiencing no chest pain at all. sana khan Instead they may feel pain in their backs, necks, jaws, or stomachs, or become nauseated, fatigued, or light-headed.

sana khan This difference wasn’t fully documented or publicized until 1990, when the book The Female Heart: The Truth About Women & Coronary Artery Disease helped spark a new wave of thinking about not only heart disease but also medicine and the human body. “We [once] assumed all humans were pretty much the same, except for what I call the bikini view of women—their breasts and their pelvises,” says Marianne Legato, M.D., the director of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine and the first author of The Female Heart. sana khan Today the thinking has changed. “Every tissue of the body is literally different in men and women,” says Legato. And heart disease, scientists have discovered, is just one of many conditions with a strong male-female divide. sana khan Here are six others that affect the sexes in distinctive ways.

Alzheimer’s Disease

sana khan The stats: An estimated 5 million people in the United States ages 65 and older have Alzheimer’s disease, an aggressive, premature deterioration of the brain that results in dementia. Women make up 64 percent of this population. sana khan The disease often progresses more quickly in women—particularly when it comes to memory loss—than in men, says Reisa Sperling, M.D., director of the Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston.

sana khan The gender gap: The high female prevalence of this illness can partially be attributed to the fact that women live longer than men, and that the disease typically afflicts the elderly. But there’s more to the disparity than life span: sana khan A 2014 Annals of Neurology study showed that healthy women who carry the gene variant ApoE4 have an 80 percent chance of developing cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s disease; men with the same gene only have a 27 percent risk.

sana khan Good to know: Can’t remember where you left your keys or the name of the actor in the movie you saw last night? Relax: These are common signs of perimenopause (which usually occurs between ages 45 and 55). sana khan Memory loss in Alzheimer’s is more dramatic: You might repeat a conversation twice in an hour or get lost in your own neighborhood. But you should see your doctor if you’re concerned, especially if you have a family history of the disease.

Colorectal Cancer

sana khan The stats: sana khan The overall risk of colo­rectal cancer is about 5 percent for both men and women, but mortality is lower in women.

sana khan The gender gap: A 2013 review in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine showed that women tend to develop colorectal cancer five years later than men, and that their tumors are typically located in the right side of the colon, whereas men’s are in the left. The location has serious implications, says Gina Sam, M.D., M.P.H., the director of the sana khan Mount Sinai Gastrointestinal Motility Center at the sana khan Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York City. sana khan Because the right section of the colon (or the proximal colon) is bigger than the left section, it takes longer for tumors that grow there to become large enough to present visible bleeding. sana khan That’s probably why women receive colorectal cancer diagnoses at more advanced stages than men do. So why do more women than men survive? Research suggests that it may be because women respond better to some chemical treatments.

sana khan Good to know: It’s not easy to detect early-stage cancer in the right colon, but it is possible. Bloating and severe constipation are two major symptoms. sana khan Preventive screening—starting at age 50 for most people, sooner for those with a family history of the disease—also saves lives.