Your Health: Men are from Mars, women from Venus

WOMEN respond differently to drugs compared with men.

A clinical trial in 2005 shows that a low dose of aspirin taken regularly, which seems to help middle-aged men avoid heart attacks, does not offer the same cardiovascular benefits for middle-aged women - although it does lessen the risk of stroke. Diagnosis and treatment are different for both men and women. The traditional test for detecting heart disease in men is far less reliable when performed on women, for they might not show the same symptoms.Hormones, for example, profoundly affect how men and women metabolise medication. Therefore, epileptic and asthmatic women often suffer attacks before having their periods. Drug dosages need to be adjusted accordingly.

During a heart attack, men usually feel pain in the chest or left arm, but 20 per cent of women suffer pain in the upper abdomen or back, shortness of breath, nausea and sweating.Because women are more sensitive to the carcinogens in cigarettes, those who smoke the same amount as men have a 20-70 per cent higher chance of developing lung cancer. To compound that, women's tumours tend to appear on the lungs' periphery, so their cancer is often noticed much later.Some basic bodily responses are different between men and women.Men often react to pain with a rise in blood pressure, but women may experience a rise in heart rate, and sometimes even a drop in blood pressure.Yet, after surgery, doctors often gauge levels of pain by blood pressure, not heart rate.Indeed, men and women differ at all behavioural level and engage in different risk-taking behaviours. These are probably related to their traditional gender roles.Men are greater risk takers, in that they face more serious and lethal consequences. They are also more likely to smoke, drink, use drugs and engage in risky sports.Women, on the other hand, are likelier to engage in " health protective" behaviours, including going for health screening (eg, breast self-examination, pap smear screening, regular check-ups). They are also more likely to eat right and exercise more. Yet, women are also the fastest growing risk group for HIV/AIDS, although it is mostly an invisible epidemic among them.The primary routes of transmission for women are sexual activity (64 per cent) and intravenous drug use (11 per cent). Women and men do not receive the same (or similar) medical care even though they suffer from the same conditions and this is not just in poor countries. The entry of more women into the field of science and subsequently medicine has started a quiet revolution and a reassessment of accepted notions of what it is to be a woman. Women are not the second sex but a separate sex. They are female to the bone and to the very cells that make up those bones. This "equal but different" stance is crucial to modern gender studies. Most, if not all medical and psychological research, was done on men, and the conclusions recklessly applied to women. The birth of gender-specific medicine, which is the science of how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender, can be linked to Marianne J. Legato, who founded the Partnership for Women's Health at the University of Columbia. Dr Legato, who practises in New York City, is also a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons and the editor of The Journal of Gender Specific Medicine and Gender and Health. Interestingly, traditional medicine has long understood and appreciated the differences between men and woman. This is more so in Asian traditional medicine. Certain herbs were specifically designated for use on the fairer sex. Woman had different meridian and hence, acupuncture points. Women had also subtle and clear difference in the flow of the life force - prana or chi. Clearly, the Asian traditional medicine has a lot to offer in healthcare. That is why Malaysia is playing host to a conference and exhibition called "Woman's Health And Asian Traditional Medicine (WHAT Medicine) for the third year in the row. This year, the event is held in collaboration with the Council For Scientific and Industrial Research of India and the National Centre for Natural Products Research of the United States. Among the speakers are the FDA programme director for natural products and the director of the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine. For information, log on to www.whatmedicine.org or call 03-7965-2888.