16 Facts That Show How Impressive A Woman’s Body Is
Love your body, woman! Because a woman’s body is simply beautiful and can do impressive things!
Not only can a woman’s body grow an entire human being from scratch – ensuring the survival of our entire species – but also, a woman’s body can do plenty of other unbelievably impressive and downright extraordinary things.
Here are 16 amazing facts that showcase how incredible a woman’s body truly is!
1. Women live 5 years longer
It is a well-documented fact that women in most modern populations tend to live longer than men. While men can expect to live until the age of 76, the life expectancy for a woman is a full 5 years longer at age 81. Although there is no definitive answer as to why, one reason may be higher levels of estrogen circulating a woman’s body spares her organs from excess fat deposit. Thus, protecting against cardiovascular disease.
2. Women have strong immune fighters
Women are really good at fighting off infections. A woman’s immune system is stronger than that of a man. This is thanks again to the fact that the hormone estrogen, which women have much more of. Basically, estrogen suppresses the enzyme that gets in the way of our body’s defences against bacteria and viruses.
Not only that, women can also thank HER higher levels of estrogen for being great at surviving traumatic injuries. Although it is uncertain the exact reason why this is the case, it might be a woman’s body way of providing extra protection for any children she may be carrying.
3. Women think differently than men
It is not merely a popular opinion that women and men think differently. The science shows that there are differences between the male and female brain. For one thing, women perform exceptionally on memory tests. Women, compared to men, have been shown be better at remembering to-do lists and they are also better at remembering names and recognizing faces.
And it’s not just remembering faces that women excel at, they are good at reading them too. Women can read emotional cues from facial expressions much more accurately, which might be why they tend to be more empathetic on average.
4. Women use more brain to listen
Scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine have shown what many have long suspected – women, compared to men, devote more brain activity to listening. In a small study not yet published, scientists used fMRI machines to track the brain activity while participants listened to someone read aloud a passage from a novel. As men listened, only the left side of their brain – the area associated with listening and speech – showed increased activity. Women, however, showed activity on both the left side and the right side, the side associated with creativity and expression.
Scientists are uncertain how these findings tie into listening skills, but they did conclude that women, in general, use both sides of their brain much more often. This could be why women tend to be better at multitasking.
5. Women have more words
When it comes to expressing oneself, women are definitely more verbal. A study showed that women are quite proficient at processing language and tend to use more words than men. This is because women have larger frontal and temporal lobes, the brain regions associated with language skills. Also, women have higher levels of FOXP2 protein, also referred to as the “language protein”. This might account for why women speak on average of 20,000 words per day – 13,000 more than the average man speaks in a day! So, the phrase, “a man of few words” is not be just a saying, but rather, a fact!
6. Women see the world more colourfully
Men and women also see the world differently – literally. A mutation on the X chromosome allows about 40% of women to see much broader range of colours in the red-orange family, while many men are actually “Christmas colour-blind”, meaning that they have a hard time distinguishing between red and green.
7. Women are super-sensors
And speaking of eyes – it is absolutely true that women cry more often than men! Adult women cry on average of 5.3 times per month, while men average only 1.4 times. There are biological reasons for this: not only do women have larger tear ducts, women have 50-60% more of the hormone prolactin, which is primarily responsible for lactation but also controls our tears. Lastly, men have higher amounts of testosterone coursing through their bodies, which may blunt men’s desire to cry.
Though this is not a competition between sexes, women might have the edge when it comes to taste, thanks to an abundance of taste buds compared to men. This means that about 35% of women are ‘super-tasters’, perceiving tastes, especially bitter, more intensely compared to 15% of men.
8. Women have greater muscle endurance
On average, men may be stronger than women, but women may have more muscle endurance. In some studies, women can last up to 75% longer in stamina-related exercises. Once again, women can thank their higher levels of estrogen, which makes their muscles more resistant to fatigue – something that definitely comes in handy during childbirth.
Women are also more flexible, thanks to increased levels of elastin in their muscles and tendons, a protein that allows muscles and even organs to stretch. Yet another useful feature during pregnancy and childbirth.
9. Women have longer guts
Women also have more guts than men – literally! The lower part of the colon is longer in women than in men. Women also have more stuff crammed into their lower abdomen – between their digestive tract and their reproductive organs, there is less room for things to expand. This may help explain why women tend to experience more digestive distress than men. Learn more about your gut health in my gut microbiome post here and what your poop tells you about your gut health here!
10. Women have thinner skin
Women’s skin is also different from men’s skin. Women’s skin is much more sensitive due to being 25% thinner than men’s skin. Unfortunately, that also means that women’s skin is more prone to wrinkles thanks to a loss of collagen as they age.
11. Women are more forgetful about past pain
Scientist were surprised to discover that women genuinely experience more pain than men. It has more to do with their brain and not with how strong they are. Canadian scientists showed that perception is a big part of it because women tend to forget their past pain faster, whereas men are better at remembering it. Therefore, in general, the study showed women’s threshold for pain is actually 9 times stronger. This might be a protective mechanism to help women forget just how painful childbirth can be.
Thankfully, women are able to manage their pain incredibly well too. Again, owing to the extra estrogen coursing through their bodies, which acts as a natural pain reliever. However, during some parts of their cycle when estrogen is at its lowest levels, women are actually more sensitive to pain.
Female Reproductive System
Many of the things that make women’s bodies so incredible is the fact that a woman’s body is designed to carry and birth babies. Here are some of the most interesting facts about a woman’s body that have to do with her reproductive system.
12. Women are born with all her eggs
A woman is born with all of the eggs she will ever have in her entire lifetime. Before she’s even born, a female fetus will have 6 to 7 million eggs, but by the time she’s born, that number has already dropped dramatically to just 1 to 2 million eggs. By puberty, she’s down to 400,00 eggs, and by her late 30s, a woman only has 20,000 eggs left. By the time she hits menopause, a woman has just 1,000 eggs left in her reproductive system.
13. Women have a shape-shifting uterus
The uterus is an incredibly elastic organ. During pregnancy, a woman’s uterus grows from the size of an orange to the size of a watermelon in just nine months, pushing her other organs out of the way and up into her rib cage in the process. During labour, the uterus exerts pressure of nearly 400 pounds per square foot during contractions.
During pregnancy, a woman’s cervix is tightly closed to keep the baby inside and protected from the outside world. During labour, though, the cervix stretches to become the baby’s gateway into the world. To even begin pushing, the cervix must be dilated to 10 cm (3.9 inches) – about the size of a bagel – and it can get even larger to accommodate the baby’s head as it is delivered.
14. Women enjoy more pleasure
There’s plenty of reproductive advantages to a woman’s body, especially when it comes to sex. Not only is it true that women can have multiple orgasms, but the female clitoris alone has 8,000 nerve endings – more than double the number of nerve endings in the entire penis. The clitoris also serves no biological purpose other than to bring women pleasure. It also grows over time, meaning that sex actually gets better for women the older they get.
An orgasm can also help relieve the pain of period cramps – not a bad tradeoff for the aches of periods, the discomfort of pregnancy, and the pain of childbirth!
Weirdly, the part of the brain that gets aroused during sex is the same part of the brain that lights up when a woman is craving a specific food.
15. Women’s breasts are sisters, not twins
Although it might be hardly noticeable, no woman has perfectly identically sized or shaped breasts. One breast is most likely larger or shaped slightly a bit differently than the other. This is mostly thanks to your genetics. Also, any changes in your body composition will affect one of your breasts more than the other because weight loss or gain doesn’t always happen uniformly.
And last, but certainly not least!
16. Women need more ZZZs
Given all of the amazing and impressive things that a woman’s body can do, it should be no surprise that women actually need more sleep! Although, like men, women tend to follow the typical 24-hour circadian rhythm cycle, they still require an extra 20 minutes of sleep each night just to keep their amazing bodies going. That’s because, on average, women expend more mental energy each day – in other words, as stated in #4, women use more of their brains and multitask more often. Also, women tend to suffer from sleep troubles two to three times more often than men do.
The Bottom Line
Again, this is not a competition between sexes because both female and male bodies are truly a marvel. It is just that a woman’s body is a whole other level of impressive. And these amazing facts clearly illustrate that!
