London, Jan 1 (IANS) Women may visit doctors more often than men because they fall sick more often. They are more likely to suffer from arthritis, mental disorders and muscular problems.
Scientists, led by Davide Malmusi of the Public Health Agency of Barcelona, found that women reported health problems more often. However, they also suffered from a higher rate of chronic diseases.
‘These results suggest that the poorer self-rated health of women is a reflection of the higher burden of disease they suffer,’ said Malmusi, the European Journal of Public Health reports.
The researchers looked at data from Spain’s 2006 National Health Survey, which included interviews with 29,000 people who covered a wide age-range on how they rated their health, according to the Daily Mail.
They found that 38.8 percent of women said their health was poor or very poor with 25.7 percent saying a chronic condition limited their activity. This compared to 27 percent of men who said they had poor health and 19.3 percent reporting a chronic condition.
However, researchers found this gender difference disappeared when they matched how many chronic conditions each person had with their health rating.
Women were no more likely than men to claim to have poorer health than men when they had the same condition. Women were actually more likely to report better health than men when they had the same number of conditions.
