Men Are Less Capable Of Handling Stress Than Women – New Study

Based on new study scientists are of the opinion that women are in a better position in handling stress than men. In the study that was conducted using rodents they found that female rodents handle stress better than males, and said that it may shed light on health differences between males and females.

The three-month research by the University of Chicago used 120 rats and measured in them what is known as the inflammatory response, the body's initial, fundamental immune reaction to bacteria, viruses and other invaders.

Just two or three weeks after being subjected to isolation and a brief period of acute physical stress, male rats showed a markedly slower inflammatory response than female rats, reported the online edition of Chicago Tribune.

In fact, the response of the female rats was "staggeringly stronger", the authors wrote in their paper, which appears this month in the American Journal of Physiology.

"The study reinforces a growing body of evidence on health disparities between men and women and may shed light on why socially isolated men are more vulnerable to disease and death than isolated women," said Gretchen Hermes, one of the authors.

"I think probably the most striking thing are the dramatic sex differences in the enduring effects of a brief stress," McClintock, a psychology professor and director of the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago, said.

"If I were to link the study to what's in the news right now, there are studies of differences in heart disease in men and women.

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"We used to think they were the same disease, but now we know the nature of the inflammation is very different. In men it's localised in the large vessels, in females it's along the smaller vessels of the heart," he said.

McClintock hoped the study would be an important contribution in the understanding of sex differences of disease - "but, specifically, disease as it occurs".

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--Edited IANS