Stress in women said to be biologically based.

Women police officer, a job that has special stresses

Women, according to the actuarial tables and statistics, tend to have more disabilities over their lifetimes, although they live longer than men.  They are also seen to have considerable stress due to responsibilities for their families and occupations, but researchers now maintain why women complain more often about it.

According to that research women's stresses may have a biological basis.

Researchers from Children's Hospital in Philadelphia studied animal brains and their stress signaling systems and found that females are more sensitive to low levels of a certain stress hormone and less able to adapt to this than males. 

“This is the first evidence for sex differences in how neurotransmitter receptors traffic signals,” said study leader Rita J. Valentino, Ph.D., a behavioral neuroscientist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Although more research is certainly necessary to determine whether this translates to humans, this may help to explain why women are twice as vulnerable as men to stress-related disorders.” 

The research can be found in the online journal Molecular Psychiatry. The study’s first author is Debra A. Bangasser, Ph.D., a fellow in Valentino’s laboratory.

Researchers have long established that women suffer more from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders.  Valentino, however, has found there are underlying biological mechanisms for this.  

 The hormone corticotropin or CRF that organizes stress responses in mammals seems to be the core issue involved in the difference between men and women when it comes to mental health problems.

“This is an animal study, and we cannot say that the biological mechanism is the same in people,” said Valentino.  She observed there are other mechanisms involved in the way humans respond to stress. 

According to the American Psychological Association, the rate of stress in women is growing.  Women are 28% more likely to report mental health issues related to stress.

And as the Huffington Post related, women are particularly more prone to stress in the workplace due to that need to balance work and home situations.

Often that translates into physical conditions related to the stress.

That may be the reason women say "I have a headache when a man requests a specific type of attention.