Health sense: men falling behind women
A few years ago, a study was published that showed that women are far more often sick than men. A new study now comes to the conclusion that the so-called stronger sex is weak. According to the researchers, men consider themselves to be sicker than women – especially in the East of the country.
German men feel sicker than women
A study of the health insurance company DAK-Gesundheit has shown a few years ago, that the Sick leave among women is higher than men. Nevertheless, some experts point out that men are more often sick than women. At least you will feel sicker, as in a new study by the social scientist Mine Kühn from the Max-Planck-Institute for demographic research (MPIDR) in Rostock have now been found.
Gender relations have been reversed
As the Institute reported in a communication, felt men in the East and the West directly after the reunification in 1990 significantly healthier than women.
However, within the next nearly 25 years, the perceived health differences between women and men were everywhere getting smaller and smaller.
So the self-perceived health of the men was in the year 2013 and, finally, even among the women. According to the figures, the projection of women in the East is more pronounced than in the West.
According to the study, gender relations have been reversed since the end of the GDR.
The results of the study was recently published in the journal “Social Science and Medicine – Population Health”.
Self-perceived Are says a lot about the sense of life
Mine Boldly, according to the satisfaction with health is not only a good measure of actual health.
“The self-perceived state of health of people says much about your sense of life,” says the scientist.
For their study, the researcher data of the representative survey “Socio-took-economic Panel” (SOEP), for the approximately 20,000 people in Germany regularly answer, how satisfied are you with your state of health on a scale from Zero (“very dissatisfied”) to 10 (“very satisfied”).
Boldly analysed data for people aged 20 to 59, who lived during the entire investigation period from 1990 to 2013, in your part of the country (East or West).
You difference according to the part of the country and the gender and expected influences such as income and education.
The result: The Trend shows that men in particular from East Germany, the time information, health feel worse.
Women can better cope with psychosocial Stress
What could jokingly be considered a spread of the “men’s flu” is perceived, the author of the Study with a serious Background:
“It is possible that the political and social changes since the turn of just means for men in the East so much Stress that their health – or at least your health sense – has strongly suffered.”
As is known, such as unemployment and continuing to lead in economic uncertainty, increasingly, to unhealthy behavior such as alcohol consumption or Smoking.
That men were affected more than women, it could also be due to the fact that women had in General, better skills, psychosocial Stress, and in difficult times in particular, more of your social network benefit.
East German men were to the “problem group”
While the East German men, meanwhile, have the worst perceived health values, it was directly after reunification, the East German women.
MPIDR-researcher Mine Boldly believes that they may have suffered, that directly after the end of such jobs vanished, the occupied typically women.
However, over the years, the women seem to have of such burdens is recovered, and the East German men were to the “problem group”.
The yoke according to Daring to change the life styles that had been investigated in other studies: “East German women now reach similar values in terms of physical activity, or alcohol consumption, such as West German women.”
The men in the East of Germany would not have minded in the healthy lifestyle in contrast to those in the West. They live as before the reunification as unhealthy as any of the other groups of the population. (ad)
