Gender medicine: more than a small difference
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN: What exactly does gender medicine do?
Alexandra Kautzky-Willer: In gender medicine, both the differences and the similarities between women and men are explored. In addition to the biological as well as the social, cultural and social components are considered. Gender medicine is always dynamic and interdisciplinary, it has a holistic approach and includes physical and psychological aspects.
Why do women need special medicine?
The differences between the sexes are partly serious. In addition to the genes, the sex hormones that change in the different stages of a woman's life are crucial. The hormones in turn affect metabolic processes. Organs such as the liver, intestine and kidneys work differently. Women also have a lower fasting sugar level, which increases after eating, especially with sugar, but higher than in men.
What role does stress play?
A major role. Women are more sensitive to stress than men. Your body reacts harder to stress and they get sick faster. They get more depression and, when stressed, diabetes earlier and more often than men. An irritable bowel has 70 percent of women. The risk of having a heart attack is 25 percent higher in smokers than in men, especially after menopause.
Infarcts that are often not recognized in time.
Right, because they express themselves differently in women than in men. Women may have back pain, they are sick, they have to vomit. Men feel a destruction pain in the chest. Women call an ambulance for her husband after only six minutes, men only alert him to her wife after half an hour. The mortality up to one year after an infarct is greater in women than in men.
Women are healthier than men. Why are not they still optimally caring for themselves?
Women go to the doctor more often and have more contacts with other health professionals. Nevertheless, they have less healthy years of life and are sicker than men when they are older. One problem is that women from the menopause no longer pay attention to themselves. From the age of 50 to 60, they also rarely go to check-ups, although it would be particularly important then.
What else should women do?
Learning to handle stress better. Unlike men, women eat and smoke when they are under stress. However, their lung tissue is more sensitive and more damaging than that of men, with a lower number of cigarettes they have a higher lung cancer risk because the estrogen interacts with the smoke ingredients and its protective effect is diminished. The risk of bladder cancer is greater. Nevertheless, women find it harder to quit smoking, especially because they are afraid to gain weight.
What do you recommend women?
Women are very focused on their diet, most are always dieting because they do not look like Barbie. But Barbie would have a BMI of about 16 and would not be viable at all. Instead of constantly paying attention to food, women should put more emphasis on exercise. Also important are stress management, relaxation and adequate sleep. Such a comprehensive healthy lifestyle, a "comprehensive lifestyle", as experts say, improves the quality of life and keeps you healthy and fit.
