depressed. Everyday stress is one thing, but women who have had childhood or other trauma (an estimated 20% of women55) are more likely than other women to experience depression. The ratio of females to males who have depression is 2.5 to 1 in the United States.
Depression and its symptoms—lack of initiation, loss of pleasure, disrupted daily circadian rhythms, anxiety, sleep disturbances—dampen the arousal pathways in the brain. Fortunately, exercise, talk therapy, and the right medicine can help reawaken the brain to new paths instead of just depression.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
Seasonal affective disorder can range from winter blues to depression. Over 75% if those who have it are women, and the majority of them are in their twenties to thirties.56
What causes SAD? There are several hypotheses:
Oversecretion of melatonin in the winter,
Lack of light, which stimulates specialized cells in the retina that directly connect the eyes to the brain,57
Body-chemistry problems causing the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin to be out of sync and thus interfere with mood, appetite, and sleep patterns,58
Lack of vitamin D.
If you can't move to Costa Rica from November to March, light boxes can help SAD. Check with your doctor about increasing your vitamin D as well.
Anorexia Nervosa
Women who experience anorexia nervosa may have a hypersensitivity to estrogen in the hypothalamus. That part of the brain produces hormones to control body temperature, hunger, moods, and the release of hormones from different glands. This hypersensitivity may create the sensation of having eaten enough before the body is full.
Migraines
A migraine is more than a headache. It's a neurological disease that can include nausea and vomiting; sensitivity to light, touch, and sound; tingling or other sensations in the skin; visual changes, like seeing an aura, halo, or zigzag of lights; sound auras, such as echoes, tremolo, or buzzing; hunger pangs; and slurred speech. And some people get migraines without even the headache.
Not fun, as anyone who's ever had a migraine knows. About one out of twenty men and one out of five women get migraines—chronically (more than half the days each month), periodically (perhaps with the menstrual cycle) and/or episodically (not predictably).
Boys get more migraines than girls—until they reach puberty. Migraines become a predominantly female issue after menstruation begins; women are twice as likely to have migraines around their period, and migraines can be most severe during menstruation. But it's the fluctuation of hormones that can set off migraine sensitivity. For many women with migraines, natural menopause is a blessing, because the hormonal fluctuation ceases.
In addition to hormones, other things, such as food, lights, and red wine, can trigger migraines. But the triggers aren't the cause of migraines. The brain's hypersensitivity is the cause, says Carolyn Bernstein, MD, in her book The Migraine Brain.59 A hypersensitive brain reacts frequently and intensely to brain stress by creating an electrical wave, a red alert, that can make the nervous system go haywire. The electrical-wave reaction isn't unusual, but the overresponsiveness of the migraine brain is.
The effects of the wave can start with physical sensitivity—clothes suddenly feel tight, the head feels hot. Then the wave can incite pain in one or both of the major nerves that run on either side of the head, from behind the ear to the forehead, nose, and jaw. That is why one side of the head may hurt and one of the eyes can throb.
The migraine brain even looks different than a regular brain when seen through a brain scan. Scans done at Massachusetts General Hospital showed that the part of the brain that processes pain, touch, temperature, and sensory information—the somatosensory cortex—was 21% thicker than the somatosensory cortices of those who don't experience migraines.60 That thinner somatosensory cortex either causes the migraines or is the result of them—researchers don't know yet.
Those affected often are vigilant about avoiding what sets them off. That can mean getting sufficient sleep and avoiding low blood sugar, alcohol and/or red wine, the artificial sweetener aspartame, foods containing the amino acid tryanine (such as soy sauce, pepperoni, bananas, and raspberries), toxic cleaning fluids and chemicals, smoke, strong smells, and computers or video games.
Some migraine sufferers are helped by over-the-counter drugs, including those with caffeine. Others use the medication Imitrex, part of the triptan family, which interrupts the biomechanical pain/brainwave effect. Many get some help from magnesium supplements, since those with migraines have lower levels of this mineral. Interestingly, tinted glasses can also help stabilize brain activity, says a study from Michigan State University and the University of Michigan.61
Stress
Is life harder for women than it is for men? Whether it is or not, women have more intense responses to stress and anxiety disorders, says Margaret Altemus of Cornell University Medical School.62 The reasons are women's hormone reactions and the way the neurons operate in women's brains:
We release greater amounts of cortisol (stress hormone) from the adrenal glands.
Our brains trigger greater physical responses in the automatic nervous system, such as breathing changes, increased heart rate, stomach tension, and sweating.
Estrogen increases production of corticotropinreleasing factor (CRF), a brain protein that tells the pituitary gland to send out stress messages to the adrenal glands.
You’ll learn what stress does to your body and brain, and how to handle it, in chapter 5.
Pain
Being a woman is a pain—and that's not just an expression.
Researchers at Florida State University combined the statistics from over eighty different pain disorders and found that, compared to men, twice as many women suffered from pain disorders. “The burden of pain is greater, more varied and variable for women than men,” says pain expert Karen Berkley, PhD, distinguished research professor of neuroscience at Florida State.63 One reason that women have more pain is unsurprising: disorders of the uterus can radiate pain.
Another reason is that women's XX chromosomes “lead to a fair number of painful diseases that men simply would not get,” says Donald Pfaff, PhD, author of Man and Woman: An Inside Story.64
A third reason for more pain in women is surprising: women are more likely than
