Interesting facts about men and discrimination against men’s health: what’s the problem?

You prob­a­bly have not even heard that there is such a hol­i­day — Inter­na­tion­al men’s day! And it is not only cel­e­brat­ed this year Novem­ber 2 in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, it is offi­cial­ly approved by the UN. And Mikhail Gor­bachev par­tic­i­pat­ed in the approval of this spe­cial day. Why and who need­ed this Men’s World Day?

There are many facts about men that sta­tis­tics are silent about. Although we know that the aver­age woman lives longer than a man, but who knows that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the stronger sex look at girls for almost a year of their life, and also that gen­tle­men tell lies 2 times more than ladies? Med­AboutMe even knows what men lie about the most and reveals inter­est­ing facts about the life of a strong half of the pop­u­la­tion and how men are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Even where they them­selves do not sus­pect it.

Discrimination due to testosterone

Although nom­i­nal­ly Men’s Day is a hol­i­day, it is not about gifts and feasts. He was approved for seri­ous pur­pos­es, to equal­ize the rights of both sex­es. It all start­ed when writer George Kindel came up with the idea of ​​testos­terone’s effect on the male brain. There­fore, the strong half of human­i­ty is ini­tial­ly prone to aggres­sion.

Good for ladies: their soci­ety does not con­demn them for man­i­fes­ta­tions of strength, but all because they do not have testos­terone pres­sure. It turns out some­how unfair: men have to fight with their nature. In order not to be sad in such a bat­tle for pos­i­tive, rather than aggres­sive, under­tak­ings, the writer sug­gest­ed reward­ing men wor­thy of atten­tion with spe­cial prizes. The win­ners of the awards had to prove at the high­est lev­el their vic­to­ry over the “male hor­mone of aggres­sion” and show how a real man should act in chang­ing the world. Name­ly, with­out vio­lence.

The hol­i­day was approved in 2000 by the UN, and Mikhail Gor­bachev was elect­ed pres­i­dent of World Men’s Day. Prizes were award­ed until 2006. Years. Copies of Rod­in’s The Thinker dur­ing this time were award­ed to Lech Wale­sa, Paul McCart­ney, Luciano Pavarot­ti, Michael Jack­son, Michael Dou­glas, Paul Free­man, Alain Delon, John Paul II and the mag­nates Thad and Richards Bran­son.

In sup­port of the strong half — our facts about the char­ac­ter­is­tics of men and their dif­fer­ences from women. Believe me, many few peo­ple knew until sci­en­tists decid­ed to get to the bot­tom of the truth!

On Novem­ber 19, anoth­er Inter­na­tion­al Men’s Day is cel­e­brat­ed, adopt­ed in 60 coun­tries as a con­trast to Father’s Day.

Male nightmare: non-female version

The effect of testos­terone has been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven, and there is no argu­ing with it. But not only the lev­el of male hor­mones shows dif­fer­ences in the body. For exam­ple, sci­en­tists have stud­ied what exact­ly men dream about, what they con­sid­er a night­mare.

More than 100,000 dreams have been stud­ied by spe­cial­ists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­tre­al. Yes, death, ill­ness, and threats to per­son­al well-being are com­mon motifs in adult night­mares. But there are also gen­der dif­fer­ences.

Men tend to wake up in hor­ror if they see large-scale cat­a­stro­phes, glob­al dis­as­ters, war… But con­flicts between per­son­al­i­ties at night dis­turb main­ly women: 2 times more than the stronger sex.

Men’s lifestyle depends on intelligence

The Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute (Swe­den) decid­ed to find out if there is a con­nec­tion between behav­ior and the lev­el of intel­li­gence (IQ) in men. And to prove what influ­ences more: upbring­ing, intel­li­gence or the same testos­terone? As it turned out, IQ even affects such fea­tures as addic­tion to alco­hol.

The study involved 50,000 Swedes born between 1949 and 1951. Although it can be tak­en into account that Swe­den, like the rest of Scan­di­navia, is a rather “drink­ing” coun­try. But the con­clu­sions of sci­en­tists turned out to be wor­thy of atten­tion.

As it turned out, the low­er the intel­li­gence, the more often men tend to drink too much. How­ev­er, it is not yet very clear what influ­ences: the num­ber of emo­tion­al prob­lems in the study was not tak­en into account, only the ratio was revealed. But they def­i­nite­ly found out that the high­er the intel­li­gence, the more often a man tends to fol­low the rules of a healthy lifestyle. Look­ing for­ward to research on women!

Men lie more. But about what?

A West­ern man lies to friends, co-work­ers, boss or wife six times a day, while women lie only three times. A sur­vey con­duct­ed by 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox pri­or to the air­ing of Lie To Me revealed this sur­pris­ing fact.

It turned out that men lie 2 times more often than women. But not about events or oth­er peo­ple. The most com­mon lie: “It’s okay. I’m alright”.

Look at me!

A man spends 43 min­utes a day look­ing at about 10 ladies. These min­utes add up to 259 hours (about 11 days) per year. And for a peri­od of 18–50 years, men spend 11 months and 11 days admir­ing the fair sex.

Women, on the oth­er hand, look at gen­tle­men for only 20 min­utes a day. And over the same years, they will spend only 6 months on this activ­i­ty (the aver­age man spends the same amount of time shav­ing in his entire life). The ques­tion of where women look for the remain­ing 5.5 months has not yet been inves­ti­gat­ed.

Healthy weight as a criterion of beauty

No mat­ter how many very slen­der mod­els appear on the cat­walks or, con­verse­ly, body-pos­i­tive fol­low­ers, men remain stead­fast in their pref­er­ences. Blan­ca Oli­va (Uni­ver­si­ty of Grana­da) proved that men choose healthy women. We do not mean those who do not cough or who do not have a cold, but those whose body weight is with­in the nor­mal range.

This means that men react pos­i­tive­ly not to some ideals from Insta­gram or girls of only a mod­el ver­sion with a waist that can be clasped by the palms, but to women with a nor­mal body mass index, height-to-weight ratio.

Hands on belt or ancient pickup ritual

It’s not just cow­boys in movies who stick their thumbs under their belts. As it turned out, this posi­tion is char­ac­ter­is­tic of the entire male sex, and it is almost an instinct. Why is it need­ed?

So a man uncon­scious­ly draws atten­tion to his phys­i­cal form and inten­tions. And the main tar­get is women. When a man is eager to show his inter­est to a lady, he most often assumes a pose that shows that he is brave and strong. And, as a rule, puts his thumbs under the belt.

This rit­u­al was formed in ancient times, when there were no belts, no garters, or even pants. Males seek­ing to take pos­ses­sion of the female point­ed point­ed­ly to the area between the legs. In mod­ern times, this ges­ture is rather obscene, but we still have its con­se­quences: when a man puts his palms on the belt, the fin­gers also point to the crotch. It is dif­fi­cult to fight ancient instincts, it is eas­i­er to sim­ply real­ize the rea­sons for such ges­tures.

Men’s compliments are more appreciated by the men themselves

There is an opin­ion that men are not indif­fer­ent to com­pli­ments from women and per­ceive them with plea­sure. But in real­i­ty, com­pli­ments from mem­bers of the same sex bring them much more plea­sure. And sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion has noth­ing to do with it.

Robert Her­bert of Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty proved that men per­ceive com­pli­ments and praise in a fair­ly neu­tral way and thank them for them only 30% of the time. But if a man receives the approval of anoth­er man, then this is like­ly to be accept­ed as a par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant fact, and will increase his self-esteem. Such is the val­ue of opin­ions with­in the male fra­ter­ni­ty.

Friendship is friendship, but support is separate

Ronald E. Rig­gio, Ph.D., wrote an arti­cle in which he ana­lyzed the work on the pecu­liar­i­ties of friend­ship in wom­en’s and men’s com­pa­nies. And he con­clud­ed that the basis of male friend­ship is in the com­mon inter­est. Men like to play foot­ball, pok­er, even board games or watch movies and match­es with a friend or friends.

Female friend­ship is based on emo­tions and sup­port. Women choose girl­friends who are “emo­tion­al­ly in tune” with their inner expe­ri­ences. That, how­ev­er, does not can­cel the friend­ship of inter­est. But this is the main answer why strong friend­ships between mem­bers of dif­fer­ent sex­es are not very com­mon. We are still dif­fer­ent.

Men eat twice as much when they are with women.

This is a rather strange fact, but it was not pos­si­ble to refute it: men eat more if they are at the table with a woman. For exam­ple, they eat 93% more piz­za and 86% more sal­ads than they would in a male com­pa­ny.

Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Ph.D. Kevin Knif­fin not only cal­cu­lat­ed how many grams were eat­en in grams, but also con­clud­ed that men do this to impress beau­ti­ful ladies. It seems like a rather stu­pid method, but again, this is the influ­ence of instincts.

Freedom in dress comes with age

Cloth­ing on the body affects our well-being and self-per­cep­tion. And not only on ours, but also on how those around us see us, because they “meet by clothes”. Why we love suits for busi­ness meet­ings: they make us feel more con­fi­dent.

But the choice changes with age. For exam­ple, many young peo­ple pre­fer skin­ny, tight-fit­ting trousers, although most often to the detri­ment of com­fort (and some­times health: doc­tors have repeat­ed­ly warned about over­heat­ing and poor blood cir­cu­la­tion in the per­ineum). With age, the desire for fash­ion is replaced by the desire for com­fort. There­fore, men are more like­ly to start choos­ing loos­er cut trousers or shorts (and even under­wear!).

Features of male masturbation and … memory

Sci­en­tists could not ignore such a ques­tion. They (and every­one) won­dered how many times young peo­ple of both sex­es sat­is­fy them­selves on their own. And here’s what they found out: 44% of stu­dents mas­tur­bate an aver­age of 4.7 times a month. And 98% of guys do it 12 times a month. But it’s not accu­rate, and here’s why.

The same study found that men have a unique mem­o­ry prop­er­ty, short-term amne­sia. If the act of soli­tary plea­sure was per­formed against the back­drop of a good mood, most like­ly, a man will for­get about it very quick­ly.

From birth to death: differences in physiology

Sci­en­tists iden­ti­fy many dif­fer­ent dif­fer­ences, right down to how we pick up fall­en objects. Men are more like­ly to bend over, and women are more like­ly to squat. It is not known why sci­ence needs such facts. Here are some oth­er inter­est­ing things to know. For exam­ple, such.

• Dur­ing about the first six weeks after con­cep­tion, all human embryos devel­op like a female child, pri­mar­i­ly tak­ing in genet­ic infor­ma­tion from the moth­er’s DNA. After the sixth week of devel­op­ment, if the embryo is male, the SRY gene on the Y chro­mo­some will begin to pro­duce andro­gens, pri­mar­i­ly testos­terone, which stim­u­lates the for­ma­tion of male body organs.
• World­wide, for every 100 girls born, 107 boys are born.
• But because women tend to live longer than men, there are 101 men in the total world pop­u­la­tion for every 100 women.
• Men have high­er mor­tal­i­ty rates for all 15 lead­ing caus­es of death (with the excep­tion of Alzheimer’s) and die an aver­age of five years younger than women.
• Although men make up just over half of the world’s work­force, they are the vic­tims of 94% of all work­place acci­dent deaths.
• The adult male brain is about 10% larg­er in over­all size than the female brain. But not for intel­lect and think­ing. Since men are gen­er­al­ly taller and more mus­cu­lar than women, their brains require more neu­rons to con­trol their bod­ies.
• The aver­age man has almost 2 times more mus­cle than the aver­age woman and 2 times less body fat. This is the effect of hor­mones on our bod­ies.
• Sci­en­tists have found that male and female brains actu­al­ly func­tion some­what dif­fer­ent­ly. When men are focused on a task, they usu­al­ly use only one half of the brain for one pur­pose, con­cen­trat­ing all their atten­tion on the cur­rent task. On the oth­er hand, women tend to use both parts of the brain at the same time, which makes them more adept at mul­ti­task­ing.
• The “Adam’s apple”, or laryn­geal pro­tru­sion on the neck, is a fea­ture pri­mar­i­ly unique to adult males, and is the result of the growth of the lar­ynx dur­ing puber­ty. The term itself comes from the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Adam eat­ing the for­bid­den fruit in the Gar­den of Eden.
• The voic­es of all boys and girls change dur­ing puber­ty. But the changes in the boy’s voice are dra­mat­ic, some­times low­er­ing the tim­bre by a whole octave in tone. In nature, males also devel­op a deep­er voice as they grow old­er to attract females and intim­i­date oth­er males. And sci­en­tists believe that the change in the human voice is deter­mined by the same rea­sons: to add attrac­tive­ness to the ladies and scare off com­peti­tors.

Discrimination in medicine

Dis­crim­i­na­tion against women in med­i­cine is wide­ly dis­cussed by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. In fact, this is a fact: not only do the symp­toms dif­fer between the sex­es, but the study of var­i­ous drugs is main­ly car­ried out on male vol­un­teers. It is more con­ve­nient with them: there are no phys­i­o­log­i­cal month­ly cycles, there is no dan­ger that the test per­son will become preg­nant and the drug will dam­age the fetus … There is a lot of talk about the con­se­quences of such a bias. For exam­ple, until recent­ly it was believed that autism and atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (ADHD) occur in boys almost 5 times more often than in girls. How­ev­er, it is now clear that girls have dif­fer­ent symp­toms and are there­fore less like­ly to be diag­nosed.

This is a pret­ty well known issue. But what is rarely talked about is the dif­fer­ences that pre­vent doc­tors (and soci­ety) from treat­ing men with the atten­tion they deserve. One of the main prob­lems is male depres­sion. After all, boys don’t cry!

Stud­ies show that the abil­i­ty of peo­ple in gen­er­al and doc­tors in par­tic­u­lar to notice cas­es of male depres­sion is marked­ly low­er. And the rea­sons are in the dif­fer­ences in symp­toms.

Male depres­sion has its own clas­si­fi­ca­tion because depres­sion is twice as com­mon in women, and the symp­toms asso­ci­at­ed with male depres­sion tend to be unique to men. These include escapist, avoidant behav­ior (when a man “bumps” into work, sports, hob­bies), sub­stance abuse (pre­dom­i­nant­ly alco­hol, but there are vari­a­tions), con­trol­ling or abu­sive behav­ior, irri­tabil­i­ty, risky and reck­less behav­ior. How­ev­er, giv­en recent research, ele­vat­ed rates of depres­sion in women may sim­ply indi­cate undi­ag­nosed cas­es in men.

This is evi­denced by a recent study from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster, which proves that the abil­i­ty to detect depres­sive symp­toms in us is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced when it comes to men. Over 1,200 med­ical stu­dents read short, fic­tion­al sto­ries about Kate or Jack. Both sto­ries were the same except for the names. When asked if Kate or Jack seemed depressed, the sub­jects were more like­ly to say that Jack did not seem depressed. Those who said he was depressed were most often women. Men do not see alarm­ing symp­toms not only in them­selves, but also in oth­er mem­bers of their gen­der.

Expert com­ment

James B. Potash, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try, study author

Our results are explained by gen­der stereo­types in rela­tion to men. There is a strong opin­ion that men not only should not show their feel­ings through anger and vio­lence, but should not acknowl­edge these feel­ings at all.

A lot of atten­tion in med­i­cine has been paid to depres­sion in women, and not with­out rea­son: depres­sion is twice as like­ly to be diag­nosed in women.

Our study high­lights the impor­tance of fig­ur­ing out how to com­mu­ni­cate to men that they too are depressed, that depres­sion can be dis­abling, and treat­ment is impor­tant.

The sec­ond dis­turb­ing moment accord­ing to the results of our work is that women detect depres­sive symp­toms in men faster and more cor­rect­ly. Pre­vail­ing beliefs about mas­culin­i­ty can con­tribute to the blind­ness of male depres­sion in one­self and in oth­ers. This not only pre­vents start­ing treat­ment, but also pre­vents a pos­i­tive atti­tude towards anoth­er per­son with signs of depres­sion in a close envi­ron­ment. It is nec­es­sary to change pub­lic opin­ion and erad­i­cate the appeals “boys don’t cry”. Such dis­crim­i­na­tion cre­ates a lot of prob­lems in life and in med­i­cine, and we intend to fight it for the sake of the health of men around the world.