Being a woman - Part 1: Positive Edge on Health Front

Being a woman - Part 1:

Positive Edge on Health Front 

(Guest Post by Dr.Sai Sriram)

I take this opportunity thank you all for the responses on my post about women’s day which talked about women’s health. Based on the comments and the requests made by few people , I came to know that there is not much awareness on the women’s health front. I must thank Dr. Sai Sriram wholeheartedly for coming forward with this excellent article. Here I am introducing Dr. Sai Sriram as a Guest Author in my blog and now he is writing about the health benefits of being women.

Women are predisposed to several medical conditions by virtue of the additional X chromosome, but there are certain benefits as well. Few of them are listed below :

·         Women have a greater number of circulating white blood cells and tend to produce antibodies at a quicker rate. This makes recovery from infections relatively faster.

·         There are a bunch of diseases that manifest themselves when there is no properly functioning X chromosome. A genotypic male has just one X , hence, if something is wrong with it, he is hit.

·         The woman on the other hand, has the luxury of the additional X chromosome. She ‘carries’ the disease without suffering from it, but transmits to her children. Haemophilia follows this criss-cross mode of transmission. It is extremely rare for a women to be affected by this condition and the odds are further reduced with non-consanguineous (outside the family) marriages.

·         Another disease with a similar pattern is colour blindness. While billions of men have been accused of not recognizing colours (we just recognize the colours from sporting teams’ kits), the ones that are actually affected by color blindness are all men. 

·             Estrogen is known to protect women from certain cardiac illness by reducing the ‘bad cholesterol’. This appears to be just one of the several mechanisms that protect pre-menopausal women.

·         Also, since women tend to inexplicably link body image perception and self esteem, they are relatively easy to convince to take up a regular exercise regime. They burn those extra calories with more intent than men and reap the benefits..

·         Another important aspect of women’s health is the mental aspect. Women have higher rates of attempted suicides but paradoxically, few of those attempts actually end with the woman dying.
In other words, when a man decides to get himself killed, he sadly gets it done.

·         Although an average female tends to spend 15% (men-12%) of her life with some sickness (health is not just absence of disease or infirmity), she lives longer than the male. Surely, longevity is a gift

Despite the differences, many people realizes the importance of women only during their pregnancy. Social and cultural stigmatization accounts for the unwillingness of a woman unwell to come forward and seek help at the earliest possible. For all we know, beyond the purview of medicine, a healthy happy woman is the most vital component of a happy family, a nurturing childhood and most importantly, for a brighter tomorrow. Let us make a better tomorrow. Lets share and spread the awareness.