Consider a scenario where a man and a woman get into an accident and are grievously injured. However, in most cases the woman keeps experiencing pain as the aftermath of the injury, but the man would recover quickly. While earlier, many doctors dismissed the differences saying women were exaggerating their pain or were not able to tolerate the same discomfort as men, new studies say women experience more chronic pain in general and that it lasts even longer.

According to the study, published in the journal Science Immunology, men’s immune systems may have a better mechanism for shutting off pain, likely because of their higher testosterone levels. “What we show is, it’s a real biological mechanism from the immune cells. It’s not in the mind,” said Geoffroy Laumet, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of physiology at Michigan State University.

According to the scientists, women are more likely to develop chronic pain conditions like:

In women, high pain perception is regulated by the brain and spinal cord

For the study, the researchers asked the experiences of nearly 250 people who underwent traumatic injuries, mostly car accidents, to rate their level of pain. Though men and women had roughly the same pain severity on the day the injury occurred, men saw their pain resolve more quickly over a period of nearly three months.

Blood tests showed that the men had higher levels of a molecule known as interleukin-10, which switches off pain signals to the brain. Laumet said testosterone increased the production of interleukin-10 from white blood cells.

The same was true in lab experiments involving mice that were given injections to stimulate an inflammatory response, and afterward, male mice showed signs of their pain resolving, whereas female mice did not. Male mice also recovered faster from a small surgical incision and from being restrained in a tube for two hours, a scenario designed to mimic the physical and emotional stress of a car accident.

Across the experiments in mice, white blood cells that produce interleukin-10 were far more active in males.

Scientists say men and women process pain differently at the brain level. Functional imaging studies show variations in activity in regions linked to emotional processing and pain modulation. Women's experience:

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