October is breast cancer awareness month, bringing more awareness to women’s health and the fight against breast cancer. Breast cancer is just a small piece of the female-health puzzle. The female body is incredible and has to go through a lot over the course of a woman’s life. We wanted to kick off the month with a whole article dedicated to the amazing facts about women’s health that you need to know.
Quick Facts. Click to learn more.
- Women Have A Higher Pain Threshold
- More Resistant to Fatigue
- More Oxygen During Pregnancy
- Birth Control Depletes Important Nutrients
- Mammary Glands Extend Beyond the Breast
- Incredible Lower Body Strength
- Women Choose the Sperm
- Women Burn Fat Better
- Women live 6-7 years longer
- Women Have A Stronger Immune System
#1: Women Have a Higher Pain Threshold
And with good reason. Giving birth is one of the most painful experiences in a human life, so it is important for women to have a high pain threshold. In fact, a study out of McGill University observed that a woman’s pain threshold is 9x greater than that of a man. This is the amount of pain a woman is able to experience and has to do with how women remember the pain.
Again, for good reason, women are able to forget pain better than men. This is not to be confused with how much pain women feel. Women have more pain receptors and their skin is thinner, meaning that they feel pain more easily. When that pain has subsided, they are better at forgetting that pain and will be more likely to willingly experience that pain again.
#2: Women Are More Resistant To Fatigue
Estrogen, a hormone that is most commonly blamed for women’s “moodiness” and being “hormonal” is actually a very powerful hormone. It is so powerful, that it helps women endure longer bouts of continuous exercise.
Activities such as running, swimming, and cycling are all activities that women are able to do more easily than their male counterparts. Men are typically able to do them faster because they have greater muscular power and are typically heavier than women giving them more force behind these exercises.
But, biologically, women are better suited to endurance events.
#3: During Pregnancy, Women Are Able To Perform Workouts/Exercise More Efficiently
We already know that pregnancy is amazing. The changes to a woman’s body are numerous but are all there to help grow another human being inside of a woman over the course of 9 months. One of the first major changes to the body is the increase in red blood cell count for women.
Taking you back to high school biology, the more red blood cells you have, the more oxygen-carrying capacity your body has. Oxygen is required for energy production in most activities, so if the body has more of it then the body is able to do those activities with greater ease.
This basically means that women in their first trimester are super-human and are able to do tasks – like a workout – with greater ease.
#4: Birth Control Depletes Many Important Nutrients
For those of you who are on hormonal birth control, or who have ever been on hormonal birth control, there is one side effect that is rarely talked about. It turns out the pill depletes many important vitamins and minerals in the body.
Riboflavin, B6, B12, folic acid, magnesium, vitamin C, and zinc are the main nutrients that are depleted due to the birth control pill. These vitamins are important for general health, energy production, and metabolism. Eating a healthy, whole-food diet should help keep these nutrients in balance, but women should be consuming these foods every day if they are on the birth control pill/have recently come off of the birth control pill:
- Organ meats
- Meat
- Poultry
- Fish
- Leafy greens
- Legumes
#5: The Mammary Glands Extend Beyond the Breast
Being that October is breast cancer awareness month, we had to include at least one fact about breasts and breast cancer. 1 in 8 Canadian women will likely develop breast cancer at some point in their life. Breast cancer develops in the mammary glands, which extend beyond the breast.
The mammary glands actually extend from the breast up to the collar bone, and run across the chest, from the armpit to the breast bone. This is why regular, self-exams are important for women. They need to check the entire area where the mammary glands are found in order to do a thorough check for any lumps or abnormalities. We’ve included a breast exam diagram below to help you, or the women in your life check themselves.
Women should be checking their breasts after every period. Self-exams can be life-saving.
#6: Women Have Incredible Lower Body Strength
Although men are typically praised for incredible feats of strength, women are actually the stronger sex. Pound for pound, women have shown to be stronger than men – especially in their lower body and back muscles.
There is one young woman, Stephi Cohen, who has trained herself to deadlift 4x her body weight. Men, on average, can deadlift 1.5x to 2.5x their body weight.
#7: The Egg Chooses the Sperm
Again, let’s go back to health class in middle school. Many of us were taught that there were “Strong swimmers”, and the strongest of them was the one that fertilized the egg. Unfortunately, this is just not true.
A team of researchers from Sweden and the UK discovered that the egg releases “chemoattractants” which allows the egg to “choose” the sperm. So no, it isn’t about the strength of the swimmers, but more the compatibility of the chemicals.
#8: Women Burn Fat Better (But they also store more of it)
That’s right – women are actually better at using fat for fuel than men. During exercise, women are able to utilize their fat stores for energy more efficiently than men. This sounds great, but the flip side to this is that women are also better at storing fat than men – making it harder for women to lose and keep off unwanted fat.
Insulin, the hormone that controls sugar levels in the blood, and therefore impacts the storage of fat on the body, has a tight relationship with estrogen. The two hormones are directly affected by the other and therefore women’s bodies create and store more fat than men.
Evolutionarily, this is a good thing, as fat acts as an excellent source of stored nutrients – meaning that women can survive longer without food (or could support a baby) more easily than men.
#9: Women Live 6-7 Years Longer Than Men
The reasons for this are both biological and behavioural. Women are less likely to smoke, drink excessively, and be overweight. Women are also more likely to seek out medical help early, whereas men typically wait longer.
Testosterone, the primary sex hormone in men, also increases the chances of men taking on risky behaviours. Men are more likely to do things like getting in car accidents, physical altercations, and gunfights.
#10: Women Have Stronger Immune Systems
Women are also likely to live longer because their sex-hormones give them a stronger immune system. Estrogen is a protective hormone, whereas testosterone is a hormone that decreases the strength of the immune system.
How our sex hormones directly increase or decrease function is a complex system. Just know that estrogen boosts the function of important cells in the brain and gut, while testosterone down-regulates things like natural killer cells, while also increasing the anti-inflammatory response.
The female body is capable of some pretty incredible things. During breast cancer awareness month we are reminded that although women are fierce and resilient, but that women’s health is also vulnerable to disease. Instead of creating ridiculous ideals for women to live up to, we need to start encouraging women to care for their bodies and minds. We hope that these incredible facts about women’s health can help guide those conversations.
