Do men and women react differently when they are stressed? The answer is, of course, yes: in many situations, males and females have different behaviors and reactions that do not depend only on the personality or character of the individual but precisely on the difference of sex and … brain.
Sex and porn. And here is that a study conducted by Northumbria University (UK) would confirm the difference between the mechanisms adopted by men and women (also) to combat stress: the woman usually consoles herself by exaggerating with food, while the man resorts to sex .
The scholars submitted a questionnaire to 115 men and 250 women asking them to indicate their strategies in moments of tension. It turned out that sex and pornography are adopted by 27% of men and only 11% of women, while with food the roles are reversed: more than half of women seek comfort in the refrigerator, against just one third of the men interviewed.
Eat that passes you. Those who choose sex to combat stress find help in the endorphins released during sexual intercourse that cause a sensation of pleasure, acting like a natural drug. The use of food, in particular fatty and sweet foods, is instead a consequence of the increase in cortisol values, also known as the stress hormone, in moments of nervous tension: cortisol is in fact linked to the overproduction of insulin, which induces the body to crave sweet, salty, high-calorie foods.