If you think your tolerance for alcohol is worse than the men in your life, you’re right – we ask the experts why ladies can’t handle booze was well as lads…
Men and women may look like they operate the same on the outside, but research shows we are very different when it comes to some things… from healing to heartbeats and even the amount we blink. Here are just a few ways that men and women differ in surprising ways…
Men fall in love faster than women
Despite their reputation for being the less romantic gender, a new study has found men fall in love twice as fast as women. A team of researchers quizzed more than 800 young people aged 18 to 25 in 33 countries who described themselves as being in love for a study in the Biology of Sex Differences earlier this month.
They found that the men tended to fall in love about a month before women on average – over around four weeks, compared to two months for females. Not only did the men in the age group fall in love more quickly, they also reported falling in love more often: 2.6 times, compared to 2.3 times for women.
Researchers have put the reason down to our hunter-gatherer past, when women had to be more careful about committing to a mate who would stick around to help care for their offspring.
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According to study author, biological anthropologist Adam Bode, from The Australian National University: “Men will have fallen in love sooner than females because the male fitness landscape favours quantity of potential mates over quality, whereas the opposite is true for females.”
Women get drunk more quickly
We’ve all been through it. The throbbing headache. The dry mouth. The feeling you could throw up at any moment. But if after a heavy night your male partner feels back to normal sooner than you do, it’s not because you’ve drunk more. It may be down to your gender.
Research has found women feel the effects of alcohol sooner because they have much less of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in their stomachs, which breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. This means more alcohol, a toxin, enters the bloodstream unprocessed.
The result is that women feel its effects more on their brains – and their livers have to work harder to process it. “Females have only about one-fifth as much of this enzyme… so women literally get more effect, ounce for ounce, than men,” explains Columbia University’s Dr Marianne Legato, founder of The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine in New York.
Women have hangovers for longer
To make matters worse, women also suffer with hangovers longer. In 2003, researchers at the University of Missouri, US, surveyed over 1,230 students. Women complained of tiredness, dehydration, headaches, nausea, and vomiting more severely the next day than men who’d drunk similar amounts, and it took them longer to shake off symptoms.
One reason is that as well as having less of the enzyme they need to break down alcohol, they also have smaller livers. This means their bodies have to work harder for longer to remove the alcohol from their systems.
Psychologist Wendy Slutske, who led the research, says: “This finding makes biological sense –women tend to weigh less and have lower percentages of body water. So they achieve higher degrees of intoxication and more hangovers per alcoholic unit.”
Men’s wounds heal slower than women’s
Cut your finger? If you’re a man, you may find it takes longer to heal than a similar injury would for your female partner. This is because men have slower healing rates than women at all ages, according to a 2009 study in the Journal of Dermatological Science.
One possible reason is that men’s skin is around 20 to 25% thicker than women’s. This means there is more skin thickness for the body to repair before a wound is healed fully. However, while men’s wounds may take longer to heal, the downside is that women’s skin ages faster, particularly after menopause.
This is because men’s skin is thicker due to the effect of the male hormone testosterone. This hormone helps give male skin a higher density of the elastin and collagen scaffolding that keeps skin firm – and this gives male complexions more resilience over time.
By contrast, women owe much of their skin thickness, moisture and suppleness more to the effect of the female sex hormone oestrogen. When this drops off after menopause, it leads to a drop in collagen at a rate of about 2% per year, while men’s collagen levels decline much more slowly. Combined with a thinner skin, this means women’s skin is ageing faster by the time both genders hit their 50s.
Men get hungry faster
If your male partner complains he’s already hungry while you’re still full after your last meal, he’s not just being greedy – he really does digest his food faster. Researchers have found that men’s food moves about a fifth more quickly through their bodies than it does in women.
Men’s stomachs also empty faster because they have bigger volume and make more acid to break food down. According to gastroenterologists, it takes a woman around 28 hours to completely digest and excrete a meal, compared to around 24 hours for men.
Women also have fewer bowel movements. Part of the reason is that women have a slightly longer colon than men, with an added 10 centimetres, so their food has to travel further. Research has also found that female sex hormones alter the make-up of the digestive bile – so women have fewer salts to dissolve foods compared with men.
The female heart beats faster
The heart has its own electrical system that sends signals telling it when to contract and pump blood. These signals originate from a group of cells in the right atrium, called the sinus node, the heart’s pacemaker.
The female heart is about two-thirds the size of a man’s, weighing around 120g compared to 180g. However, because the female organ is smaller, it has to beat slightly faster to make up for it and distribute the blood around the body: 78 and 82 beats for an adult woman, compared to between 70 and 72 beats per minute for a man of the same age, according to a 2014 study in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research.
According to the researchers: “This is largely due to the size of the heart, typically smaller in females than males. The smaller female heart, pumping less blood with each beat, needs to beat at a faster rate to match the larger male heart’s output.”
Women blink more often and faster
Every minute we blink repeatedly to spread optical fluids over the surface of our eyes to keep them moist. However, women tend to blink slightly more often and more quickly than men, around 19 times a minute for females versus 11 for males, according to a 2008 study in the journal Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics.
Experts believe the reason is down to hormone differences, which contribute to the different make-up of this lubrication, which is made up of mucus, water and oil. According to eye surgeon Glenn Carp of the London Vision Clinic: “Men have more testosterone which holds these tears together better and keeps their eyes well moistened.”
Female hormones may be another reason women blink more. We don’t know why but studies have found women blink the most when they are taking contraceptive pills containing oestrogen.
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