Digestive diseases in women

Physiological peculiarities of the body affect the vast majority of female genital and endocrine diseases specific to women. Digestive diseases, including those of liver and pancreas, are less influenced by them, as there are not digestion diseases that are determined only by belonging to the feminine gender.

On the other hand, to the women there are some features related to the incidence, symptoms and treatment of digestive diseases. It occurs in physiological periods through which the female body experience: menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, lactation. The use of specific drugs such as oral contraceptives can cause various diseases of the digestive tract.

What is the incidence of digestive diseases in the physiological status of women that enhances their appearance?

First, should be mentioned functional gastrointestinal disorders that occur more commonly in women. In causing these diseases, bio-psycho-social conditions and stress of everyday life are important. Thus, a number of diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome and functional dyspeptic syndrome, biliary, or colon, women are more likely to have

For some pollutants (toxic), such as alcohol, women are more sensitive, because the enzymes that degrade alcohol are less active in women. For this reason, liver injuries (alcoholic chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis) occur even to smaller amounts of alcohol consumed, compared with men. Autoimmune hepatitis has unknown causes, is much more common in women.

Do not worry though, because there are conditions that are much rarer in women than in men, the most worrying is the gastric cancer (in Europe, there are 34 men affected by gastric cancer, compared to 14.5 women per 100,000 population).

Hemochromatosis, severe liver disease that involves abnormal iron deposit in the liver, is also less common in women and chronic viral hepatitis is encounter much more in men.