Wednesday | October 31, 2007

Main feed at LiveJournal.com

Interested? Want to see more?

Try reading the main feed at http://differenceblog.livejournal.com/
Posted by Differenceblog at 08:00:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday | January 23, 2008

Hormones and Alzheimer's Disease

More women than men are diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease (AD), according to Larry W. Baum (2005).  Baum's review focuses on conflicting data from hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in retrospective and prospective studies:  in retrospective studies, HRT seems to lower AD risk for women, but increased it in large prospective studies.    One theory that Baum suggests is that HRT use was determined by patient interview in the retrospective studies; AD patients might have forgotten their drug history.  Independently tested connections between HRT and stroke risk seem the most likely explanation.  Microinfarcts (tiny, undetected strokes) may double AD risk.

Roberta Brinton thinks the issue isn't strokes, but timing.   Brinton told Tom Siegfried (writing for Nature, 2007):  "You have to treat these cells in the brain at a time when they are healthy". In Brinton's studies (Zhao et al, 2005; Chen et al, 2006) applying estrogen to healthy cells showed a protective effect.  Once the cells started to deteriorate, however, the estrogen made that decline faster.

It's been over a year since we've discussed Alzheimer's ("Senior moments" 2006).  Honestly, I probably avoid the topic.  I'm terrified of it, and I suffer terrible Med student syndrome when I try to research it.  I'm convinced I can actually hear my brain dying.  Now, some of the studies suggest (but don't test) a protective effect of testosterone that explains the lower rates in men.  As discussed in "Senior Moments", the difference in AD rates is not entirely explained by mortality gap.  Although testosterone is clearly not an acceptable option for most women, I find any reassurance that my risk is low comforting, especially when they say that reduced estrogen could increase it.
Posted by Differenceblog at 10:28:07 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Tuesday | January 22, 2008

Mental health and religious attendance

Maselko and Buka (2008) published findings this month that they suggest indicate a benefit in continuous religious practice for women.   Maselko said "Everyone has some spirituality, whether it is an active part of their life or not whether they are agnostic or atheist or just ‘non-practicing.’" (EurekAlert, 2008).   The study found that women who had changed their attendance at religious services (whether stopping or starting) had an increased risk of mental health and substance abuse problems.  Conversely, men whose attendance changed had a decreased risk.   Maselko attributes the health decline in women to a loss of social support.

The "change in attendance" results are consistent with "non-attendance" results found by Strawbridge et al (2001).  Strawbridge also found decreased mental health outcomes for men and increased for women correlated with religious attendance.   However, Strawbridge notes that general longevity and physical health behaviors correlate positively with religious service attendance in both men and women.
I didn't attend church services as a kid.  My family was pagan.  I did tag along to some Christian services and Sunday school in first and second grade (age 6-7), but it wasn't a positive social experience, so I didn't keep it up.   Actually, when I think about religion and spirituality, I rarely think of other people.  It's always felt like a very private thing to me, which I think is related to having been brought up thinking that solitary practioners were the norm.

For more on religious differences, see January 2007:  1 & 2.
Posted by Differenceblog at 10:53:44 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday | January 21, 2008

Australian Drinking Debate

The Herald-Sun (AU, 2008) reports that the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC) new drinking guidelines "for low-risk drinking" cut men's recommended limit in half. The suggested limit of two "standard drinks" per day is equal to the recommended limit for women, and the Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA) is up in arms. The NHMRC's new guidelines are "simplified" from 12 guidelines to three - one for adults, one for adolescents, and one for pregnant women. The WFA says that the new guidelines ignore gender differences in many factors related to alcohol consumption, as well as evidence that suggests that moderate drinking may have many health benefits.


As much as I hate to admit it, I think the WFA is right here. A single guideline for men and women for alcohol consumption doesn't make a lot of sense. Difference Blog has looked at alcohol a few times, and the differences in how men and women process alcohol seem pretty robust -- even when controlling for weight and body size. Does a government agency have more of a responsibility to be accurate or fair?
Posted by Differenceblog at 12:10:18 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday | January 18, 2008

Height and legs

The site UKDating.com compiled the "seeking" information from 40,000 women's dating profiles to make a profile of "the perfect man."  The Daily Mail (UK, 2008) claims that height was the most important attribute, specifying that "Mr. Right" should be at least 5'10".  Good looks came in second to height.  Perhaps the importance of height contributes to short men's greater tendency towards violent suicide (New Scientist, 2008).

Several UK papers call the survey a counterpoint to recent research on the attractiveness of long legs. This comparison is incorrect, however, because Sorokowski and Pawlowski (2008) rated leg-to-body ratio attractiveness on both men and women.  Sorokowski and Pawlowski had 118 women and 100 men rate the attractiveness of 7 men and 7 women in photographs, height-matched but with the images manipulated to change leg length.  Legs 5% longer than average were most attractive; legs 15% longer than average were too long (±15% was the greatest variation tested).  Pawlowski suggests that longer legs signal health, making them attractive on an evolutionary basis.  It seems the author himself may be a "leg man"; Pawlowski (2001) theorizes that fat deposits on women's hips and buttocks evolved to counterbalance pregnancy. 


The news articles give the average height of a Polish woman at 5'4" with an inseam of 29".  I'm probably only 5'3.5", and I think my real inseam is probably a 28", but I tend to wear a 30" because I like a little slouch at the ankle.  Also, no one sells a 28".  "Big and Tall" stores are everywhere; "Short and Slim" -- let alone "Short and Hippy" -- men's clothes are almost impossible to find, which is a frequent point of complaint in the FTM communities.  Testosterone, time, and exercise has melted away most of my hips, but the bone structure remains, making it extremely hard to find clothes that fit.  Seriously, buying jeans is enough to make me consider violent suicide.
Posted by Differenceblog at 11:05:09 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday | January 17, 2008

Gender Difference #1: How you "do" sexual orientation?

Lisa Diamond (Psychology and Gender Studies, Univ. Utah) made news this week with her research demonstrating that women with a bisexual identity did not identify as heterosexual or lesbian after ten years (EurekaAlert 2008, links to full article.)  However, the news stories don't mention that Diamond's work is published in a special issue of the journal Developmental Psychology all about "sexual orientation across the lifespan."

However, Diamond's work is extremely specific to women.   J. Michael Bailey suggests that Diamond's work corroborates his own findings that "women don't do sexual orientation the same way men do" (ABC news, 2008).  Diamond is quoted in the same article as saying: "this is not to say that bisexual men 'don't exist' -- a claim that some researchers have made, but with which I disagree -- but simply to say that we need separate studies of male bisexuality in order to determine its own unique features."


Diamond spoke in favor of the penile plethysmograph study in Benedict Carey's infamous "Gay, Straight, or Lying" article (NYT 2005), which is enough to get her a spot on the Dan4th "enemies list".  Except that I'm not finding the hole in these studies (pun intended).  While I don't particularly like the results, I haven't found a problem with the methodology that would explain the incredibly consistent findings that women's sexuality is just different than men's.  I have no argument against these studies except for "your statistics fail to match my experience."  Which is (a) not an argument and (b) not entirely true.  However, I startled the hell out of my sleepy boyfriend this morning by musing out loud that "I can't imagine all those guys sucking dick just to get girls."
Posted by Differenceblog at 09:29:03 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday | January 16, 2008

HIV disclosure rates

Julianne Serovich studies how HIV patients deal with informing their families about their infections.  Serovich et al  (2005) found that men with HIV were most like to disclose their status to a mother or sister.  Serovich et al predicted (from their results) that about 50% of HIV-positive men's mothers would be told about their son's infection within 10 months of diagnosis.  Serovich et al (2007) looked at similar data for women, and found that about 67% of mothers would hear about their daughter's infection within 6 months of diagnosis.    AIDSmap.com points out that social support is thought to have an impact on clinical outcomes for HIV/AIDS.  However, despite their higher rates of disclosure to family, and less advanced infections, women score lower on health-related quality of life measures, according to Cederfjall et al (2001). 

This could be due to family reactions, or to cultural factors.  68% of the women in Serovich 2007 were African-American, but the men in Serovich 2005 were 86% Caucasian.  57% of the men and 41% of the women had at least some college education.  All of the men were gay; no sexual orientation data is given about the women.   In short, these groups differ on a lot more factors than their gender, and differences in disclosure rates or quality of life could reflect any of these differences.   As I mentioned in November, fear of social stigma seems to affect the testing rates in African-American populations.

Shit, HIV infection figures make me angry -- I feel so helpless to do anything about it.  I get tested annually, and I talk to young, fresh-faced, volunteers twice a year about how to do safer sex outreach, but ... well, I'm white, most of them are white, and most of the places that they're going to do outreach are filled with gay white men.  And I don't know what to do to change that.

So far, all of my HIV tests have come back negative, and I do what I can to keep it that way.  However, in 1996, when I was diagnosed with herpes, I made the decision to tell my mother about it pretty quickly.    I'm still never sure if that was a good idea or a bad one.
Posted by Differenceblog at 11:06:16 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Tuesday | January 15, 2008

Emergency!

It is well known that the Boy Scout's motto is "Be Prepared."  It's not as well known that this is the Girl Scout's motto as well.  According to a survey taken last October, men are more likely to report that they are prepared for a disaster than women (Sun Herald, 2008): 36% of men vs 22% of women reported that they were "well-prepared" or "extremely prepared."   Men and women also answered very differently on the a question about what item they would carry from their homes in case of emergency:  39% of men vs. 27% of women said they would grab financial documents first.  32% of women vs. 14% of men said they would save family or wedding photos first. 

What people say they would do may not match up with what they actually do.  Although no gender differences are extractable from these stories, Time's "What to Save From a Fire" (2007) (by Amanda Ripley) documents some of the choices made by those displaced by the California wildfires last fall.  New Orleans' Times-Picayune also published Hurricane evacuation tips (2007).

I don't normally encourage indulging in the kind of heart-wrenching pathos that reading the two articles above inspires...  I expected to have a "but" clause in that sentence.  Nope, I don't encourage it.  I know that I heard the "what would you save from a fire" game a lot in college.  It was one of those "deep" questions that was supposed to reveal a lot about you.  I also recall that I didn't answer it often.  My family had gone through a house fire 3 months into my freshman year of college.  The firefighters noticed the small bookcase of photo albums in the kitchen and threw it (through the window) into the front yard.   I'm glad they did.  Of course, a single house fire isn't comparable to your entire neighborhood being displaced; my family was able to get enormous support from the neighbors. 

Personally:  I keep my financial records and my irreplaceable photographs online.  I've still lost data, but it's a solution I can live with.
Posted by Differenceblog at 10:56:29 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday | January 14, 2008

Big year for Gender Differences

According to an EurekAlert press release (2008), two gender difference stories made the "top ten" list by popularity (measured by total web hits) in 2007: 

At #4,Rose et al's (2007) study on "co-rumination" (excessively talking about problems) in adolescents found that teenaged girls increased their anxiety and depression through complaining to friends while boys did not. 

At #10, an unpublished study from the University of Alberta; Sonya Thompson (2007) surveyed 13 and 14 year olds about their history of accessing "sexually explicit media."  Rural boys were the most frequent users, with 90% of boys and 70% of girls saying they had accessed such materials at least once.

I was (at first) surprised that I hadn't covered either of these stories last year.  On the other hand, these are both stories with very little "wow" factor, at least to me.   Boys are more likely to admit to looking at porn.  Girls are more likely to be depressed.   Now, I wonder what happens when girls complain about the lack of good porn?
Posted by Differenceblog at 10:16:24 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday | January 11, 2008

Occupational Personality: No Difference?

"There is no such thing as an `average' male or `average' female," says Dr Ray Glennon (Stuff, 2008) of psychometric firm SHL.  Analysis of results from the firm's popular occupational personality questionnaire (OPQ) (n = 6,215, 42% women) found "near-identical responses from men and women, with none of the traditional gender stereotypes" (NZHerald, 2008).  (Actual results do not appear to be published at this time). 

Ones and Anderson (2002) found some gender differences on the OPQ in British university students, with largest effect sizes on the "Active" and "Data Rational" scales.  The "Active" scale is supposed to measure "how much people enjoy physical activities,  particularly of a strenuous nature both in and out of work", while the "Data Rational" scale is supposed to measure "‘how much people enjoy working with numbers and facts, looking for trends in data  and conducting quantitative analyses."  However, in further analysis, Ones and Anderson (2003) caution that the OPQ's validity may be weak, and should be re-examined.

The "gender stereotypes" that Glennon describes in his interviews with New Zealand papers are not the ones that I think were uncovered by Ones and Anderson, and wouldn't be the stereotypes that I'd be likely to name first.   On the other hand, I may not be a typical observer in this regard.  Glennon appears to focus on "lead" vs "follow" stereotypes, and I'm pleased, but unsurprised, to discover no differences in desire in that regard.   The numbers vs. people stereotypes, which seem to be supported by the British study, strike me as more deeply ingrained and troubling stereotypes.  Since Glennon says responses were "near-identical", but doesn't say where the differences were, it's impossible to determine whether these stereotypes were confirmed or not.
Posted by Differenceblog at 10:36:27 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday | January 10, 2008

The tears incident

I'll bet that Barack Obama cries sometimes, as does Bush, as does McCain. The only person I suspect does not cry is Mitt Romney — though he probably has hired some very talented people to cry for him. -- Matt Schultz, Cedarburg, Wisconsin
Hillary Clinton's tears (Youtube) are being widely credited for her 2-point win in New Hampshire (CNN).  Polls in the days just previous had favored Obama by 4 to 7 percentage points.  Gloria Steinem, in a letter in the New York Times praises Clinton's "courage to break the no-tears rule".  Fred Hallmon, in a letter to the Boston Metro, calls it "emotional blackmail" and quips that "there's no crying in politics" (a headline shared by dozens of bloggers over the past two days).  Blogger Kelvin Wade points out a couple of examples of men in politics crying: presidential candidate Ed Muskie's tears in 1972 (which didn't work for him) and Bill Clinton's "trembling bitten lower lip" (which did).

Carrie Lane (2007) suggests two theories for why women may have evolved to cry more easily than men.    The most commonly cited figure for differences between male and female crying frequency is Frey et al (1983), who found that women cried 5.3 times per month on average, nearly four times more often than men's average rate of 1.4 incidences monthly.


I should have written about this yesterday, I suppose, but I didn't even hear about it until yesterday afternoon, and I didn't take it that seriously -- until I saw that all the Op-Eds this morning were about it.  I mean, I didn't see how this was news.  Maybe it's because I can't recall a single time where I thought I was going to cry and had any control over stopping it.  Either I cry or I don't.  I am constantly surprised by the treatment of tears as a voluntary act.  


Posted by Differenceblog at 09:52:01 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |