Period pain, epidural, episiotomy, childbirth, endometriosis…the list is long of illnesses and other moments of pure physical pain that a woman must go through in her life. Moments during which we retain an eminent dignity (apart from childbirth) compared to our beloved who at the slightest cold is adorned with a face of suffering quick to make the Cry pass. of Munch for a work of Walt Disney. And yet this expression of total malaise is justified according to science.
So while this Wednesday, January 15, 2020, the health agency Santé Publique France has just announced that the flu epidemic has officially started in Ile-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and that all the other regions of mainland France are in the pre-epidemic phase, we will have to be nice to our man if this evil strikes him. Because indeed a study published in 2016 in the American Journal of Physiology proved it with a plus b:during a flu, women suffer less than men!
How is this possible? Thanks to our estrogen, our sex hormones!
Concretely ! The flu is a virus that settles in a cell; from there it duplicates itself in the organism and spreads throughout the body. But good news for us, the estrogen present in a woman has an antiviral power that helps to fight against. How is it possible ? Because they limit the copying of the virus, which therefore reduces the intensity of the infection. Clearly, these female hormones rob the virus of its speed. So we still get sick, but not as much as men.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers took nasal cells (where the virus mainly lives) from women and men, then put them in contact with estrogen and chemical compounds that made the cells reactive to estrogen. After which they finally exposed these cells to the flu virus. At the end of the experiment, the researchers found that the female cells showed more resistance than the male ones. The viral load present in the cultures of nasal cells was much lower there than in the male cells also treated with estrogen.
Another shot of the famous Girl Power!
Note that birth control pills contain estrogen, which can help protect against seasonal flu. However, Sabra Klein, co-author of the study, reminds us that this is not valid in all cases:"You can still catch the flu, especially if you don't is not vaccinated. Estrogen levels are cyclical in premenopausal women, it may be difficult to see this protective effect in the general population” . So, guard, you are not immune either; the virus is there and we know that it makes no way or distinction.
