Is ‘man flu’ a real thing? Here’s what we know

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(Jamie Ducharme/ Time) — If you’ve ever noticed that men seem to whine about being sick far more than women do, you’re not alone. There’s even a word for the male tendency to exaggerate their suffering: “man flu.”

But are men really exaggerating, or might their experience of being sick actually feel worse than it does for women? Dr. Kyle Sue, a family medicine professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, wanted to find out, so he pored over as much sex-related flu research as he could find. His review was published Monday in the famously cheeky Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal —and though it doesn’t present any new findings, it’s likely to make men feel pretty smug about feeling sick.

Based on the existing research, Sue concluded that the man flu moniker is “potentially unjust,” citing studies that suggest men are not exaggerating their symptoms, but instead truly have weaker immune responses than women.

A number of studies conducted in mice or human cell samples suggest that differences in male and female sex and stress hormones may affect influenza outcomes, to the benefit of women, Sue writes. However, human studies have been mostly epidemiological: looking at trends and patterns within a population, rather than a controlled experiment within a lab. (…)

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