TEN WAYS GENDER DIFFERENCES CAN AFFECT HEALTH

After women and men consume the same amount of alcohol, women’s blood-alcohol content is higher than men’s — even allowing for size differences.
In a sample of women and men who smoke the same number of cigarettes, women are 20 to 70 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than men.
Women come out of anesthesia more quickly than men — it takes women an average of seven minutes to awaken; men, an average of 11 minutes.
Women get more pain relief than men when taking pain medications known as kappa-opiates.
Women are more likely than men to suffer a second heart attack within one year of their first heart attack.
In taking the same drugs — even everyday drugs such as antihistamines and antibiotics — women and men can experience different reactions and side effects.
Despite the fact that women have stronger immune systems to protect them from disease, women are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma and multiple sclerosis.
After unprotected intercourse with an infected partner, women are twice as likely as men to get a sexually transmitted disease, and 10 times more likely to contract HIV.
Depression in women is two- to three-times more common than in men. This statistic is due, in part, to the fact that women’s brains produce less of the hormone serotonin.
Post-menopausal women lose more bone than men. One result of this is that women constitute 80 percent of the total population of people with osteoporosis.

Source: Society for Women’s Health Research