Sex differences in autonomic responses to stress: implications for cardiometabolic physiology, 2022, Carley Dearing et al

Abstract

Chronic stress is a significant risk factor for negative health outcomes. Further, imbalance of autonomic nervous system control leads to dysregulation of physiological responses to stress and contributes to the pathogenesis of cardiometabolic and psychiatric disorders. However, research on autonomic stress responses has historically focused on males, despite evidence that females are disproportionality affected by stress-related disorders.

Accordingly, this minireview focuses on the influence of biological sex on autonomic responses to stress in humans and rodent models. The reviewed literature point to sex differences in the consequences of chronic stress, including cardiovascular and metabolic disease. We also explore basic rodent studies of sex-specific autonomic responses to stress with a focus on sex hormone and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis regulation of cardiovascular and metabolic physiology.

Ultimately, emerging evidence of sex differences in autonomic-endocrine integration highlight the importance of sex-specific studies to understand and treat cardiometabolic dysfunction.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi...ef-c298-48a2-89d1-6c9a597cb079&utm_campaign=&

 

I have not read the article, so I may be unfair in suspecting that “Chronic stress is a significant risk factor for negative health outcomes” is going beyond what can be inferred by the evidence. There are problems in developing non circular definitions of stress and divining causality as distinct to correlation. Is it equally possible that being female places an individual a greater risk of the automatic nervous system issues, rather than being female making the individual more likely to be adversely impacted by chronic stress.

Thinking back to my undergraduate days which may mean unreliable recollections and out of date research, but my understanding was that on average woman had more staying power or endurance than men.

 

Yes, @Peter Trewhitt.

I haven't read the article either.

The authors' lead and second sentences plant the idea, well It's already there in society, but it may serve to strengthen some beliefs that chronic stress causes illness. And in this case autonomic dysfunction. And, down the page that women are more stress reactive.

 

What is even "chronic stress"? And who decides how it applies, how it passes over some threshold? The first definition from Yale I got is: "A consistent sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed over a long period of time", which seems about average. I'm sorry but that's just way too vague to mean anything.

This is one of the things that make me genuinely angry. They deny our reports, our basic testimony reporting what happened, because they are "vague", even though they are not, the "vague" symptoms are simply common symptoms of illness, there is nothing vague about them, only their attribution to a cause. Which is not a property of the symptoms themselves but of their perception by a physician.

But then they go around with literally: stuff makes you ill. Literally just: stuff. "Live events". Then they attribute to that.... many of the most common symptoms of illness, after having established that those symptoms are vague (and therefore invalid as genuine illness??!), suddenly they are "the symptoms of anxiety or stress" just because. Literally just because.

Anyone actually ill, especially chronically ill, will be overwhelmed by everything, this is perfectly normal. No one is especially active when they're ill, it all entirely depends on denying the illness retroactively, to essentially be its own proof, as impossible as lifting oneself by bootstraps.

What nonsense.