I'M STRONGER THAN A MAN

Who is stronger, a man or a woman? If you say a man is stronger you are correct.

If you say a woman is stronger, you are also correct. Both answers are right, depending, of course on the perspective of your reasoning. Being a man symbolises authority, firmness and toughness.

The presence of a man evokes an enhanced sense of security and safety. You can’t argue with any of these.

Traditionally, men are tasked with the role of providing security and protecting women and children, not vice versa.

Physically, men are averagely bigger, taller, heavier, and are more muscular than women.

A man’s bones are stronger and denser and his body is structurally better built to take more physical abuse and trauma than a woman.

Men can jump further and higher, run faster and further than women.

Men can lift and carry heavier weights or throw things farther, and can swim faster over longer distances.

Men are more aggressive and better endowed to complete more arduous tasks.

Overall, men are generally bolder and superior in the endurance tasks, but in the medical aspects, it’s a completely different story. Health wise, the more fragile-boned and softer bodied women turn the tables and come out better off than men.

It sounds surprising, but the facts are there. Women, even with the comparative disadvantage of their
reproductive life cycle, tend to live longer and healthier lives than men.
With changing lifestyles and growing emphasis on healthier diets and regular exercise, life expectancy is also changing, rising slowly but steadily year after year.

But one thing that has not changed is the gender gap. Men and women are living longer, but decade after decade; women continue to live longer than men.

In fact, the gender gap is wider now than it was a century ago. When taken together, the longevity gap is quite significant. Everywhere you look; there are more older women than men, more widows than widowers.

For instance, in America and to a large extent in Europe, more than half of all women older than 65 are widows and widows outnumber
widowers by at least three to one.

At age 65, for every 100 American women, there are only 77 men.

At age 85, the disparity is even greater, with women outnumbering men by 2.6 to 1.  And the longevity gap persists even into very old age, long after hormones have passed their peak; among centenarians, there are four females for every male. This gender gap is not unique to America.

In fact, every country with reliable health statistics reports that women live longer than men The longevity gap is present both in industrialised societies and in developing countries.

It’s a universal observation that suggests a basic difference between the health of men and women.

Not only do men die at a faster rate than women, men die younger. Men are more burdened by lifetime illness than women.

On the average, a man falls ill at a younger age and has more chronic
illnesses than a woman.

The indirect translation of this is that women live longer and healthier lives
than men.

For instance, the average overall mortality rate is 41 percent higher for men than for women, and it’s also higher for men for eight of the 10 leading causes of death.

In addition, American men are 2.1
times more likely to die from liver disease, 2.7 times more likely to die from HIV/AIDS, 4.1 times more likely to commit suicide, and 3.8 times more likely to be murder victims than women.

Further, men are nearly 10 times more likely to get inguinal hernias than women, and five times more
likely to have aortic aneurysms.

Men are about as likely to contract HIV and AIDS as women, but are more prone to gout and three times more likely than women to develop kidney stones, to become alcoholics, or to have bladder cancer. Men are about  twice as likely to suffer from emphysema or a duodenal ulcer.

Although women see the doctor
more often, the medical care cost is much higher for men beyond age 65.
The gender gap in health and longevity Genetic makeup A man and a woman each have 22 identical pairs of chromosomes.

The 23rd set of chromosomes
separates the sexes. This final pair contains the sex chromosomes.

In women, the pair are X
chromosomes, while in men one is an X and the other a Y.

The Y chromosome is smaller and
contains fewer genes that may be linked to diseases that contribute to the excess male mortality throughout life. In addition, if a woman has a
disease-producing gene on one of her X chromosomes, it may be counterbalanced by a normal gene on the other X, but if a man has the
same bad gene on his X chromosome; he lacks the potential protection of a matching gene.