Thursday, January 1, 2009

Physiology of Male Design and Purpose


PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES

People vary in their physical makeup. Each body reacts differently to varying degrees of physical stress, and no two bodies react exactly the same way to the same physical stress. The following paragraphs describe the most important physical and physiological differences between men and women.

SIZE:
The average 18-year-old man is 70.2 inches tall and weighs 144.8 pounds, whereas the average woman of the same age is 64.4 inches tall and weighs 126.6 pounds. This difference in size affects the absolute amount of physical work that can be performed by men and women.

MUSCLES:
Men have 50 percent greater total muscle mass, based on weight, than do women. Men usually have an advantage in strength, speed, and power than women.

FAT:
Women carry about 10 percentage points more body fat than do men of the same age. Men accumulate fat primarily in the back, chest, and abdomen; women gain fat in the buttocks, arms, and thighs. Also, because the center of gravity is lower in women than in men, women must overcome more resistance in activities that require movement of the lower body.

BONES:
Women have less bone mass than men, but their pelvic structure is wider. This difference gives men an advantage in running efficiency.

HEART SIZE AND RATE:
The average woman's heart is 25 percent smaller than the average man's. Thus, the man's heart can pump more blood with each beat. The larger heart size contributes to the slower resting heart rate (five to eight beats a minute slower) in males. This lower rate is evident both at rest and at any given level of submaximal exercise. Thus, for any given work rate, the faster heart rate means that most women will become fatigued sooner than men.

FLEXIBILITY:
Women generally are more flexible than men.

LUNGS:
The lung capacity of men is 25 to 30 percent greater than that of women. This gives men still another advantage in the processing of oxygen and in doing aerobic work such as running or physical labor.

RESPONSE TO HEAT:
A woman's response to heat stress differs somewhat from a man's. Women sweat less, lose less heat through evaporation, and reach higher body temperatures before sweating starts. Men have more sweat glands per square inch. Nevertheless, women can adapt to heat stress as well as men. Regardless of gender, people with a higher level of physical fitness generally better tolerate, and adapt more readily to, heat stress than do less fit individuals.

COGNITIVE:


BLOOD: Males have 10 percent higher red blood cell counts, higher hemoglobin readings, and consequently higher oxygen-carrying capacity. They have higher circulating clotting factors including vitamin K, prothrombin, and platelets.
Their rapid clotting and higher basal metabolic rate leads to more rapid healing
of wounds and bruises. Males have fewer sensory nerve endings in the skin and higher peripheral pain tolerance. This combination of traits may aid in encouraging males to be more active and to be risk takers.

The male digestive system functions at a higher pace and is able to produce energy to burn at a faster rate. Men radiate more heat than women as a result of their higher metabolic process. They have larger teeth, more salivary glands, more active gastric glands of the stomach. They are therefore more subject to ulcers. Their metabolic machinery converts more food to circulating energy and building blocks and less to fat. Their circulating blood sugar, cholesterol, and amino acids are higher. They eat more meat and protein and assimilate food faster. This perhaps accommodates the larger muscle mass that must be maintained. This is particularly true of young men still developing muscle. Males, however, often continue the protein and fat-rich diets well after the body-building years and years of high activity. The high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides then collect in blood vessel plaque, causing hardening of arteries and constriction of vessels. As a result, males are more at risk of heart attacks, strokes, hypertension, and related ailments such as headaches, ringing ears, and dizziness.


Is it just me or does our very physiology alone suggest that not only are we different we are virtual opposites. Men are strong and have muscles and advanced cooling systems for a reason. Men are designed to provide and protect females and children at all costs. He is designed to acquire territory and resources and utilize those resources intelligently to support life. He is designed to fight other men and physically if need be to accomplish his role. Women choose the largest, tallest, strongest,intelligent,symetrical(good looking),high status, dominant, resourcefully sucessfull and powerful males. That is not to say there are not other traits women look for but most women would agree that this is true. Our gender roles and male dominance in the world sphere stems for his need to do these things and to do them not to oppress females but for females. It is all for females. Females are the only thing he would give the fruits of his labor to gladly and proudly. Men often occupy the ranks of resource utilization fields such as engineering. Men have a unique understanding of how things work and how to fix and build them. Many men have hobbies that utilize this innate male purpose of resource utilization.

EDIT (IS REDUNDANT AT THE MOMENT)
Obvious differences between men and women include all the features related to reproductive role, notably the endocrine (hormonal) systems and their physiological and behavioural effects. Such undisputed sexual dimorphism include gonadal differentiation, internal genital differentiation, external genital differentiation, breast differentiation, muscle mass differentiation, and hair differentiation.
Externally, the most sexually dimorphic portions of the body are the chest, the lower half of the face, and the entire area between the waist and the knees. [3]
The basal metabolic rate is about 6 percent higher in adolescent boys than girls and increases to about 10 percent higher after puberty. Women tend to convert more food into fat, while men convert more into muscle and expendable circulating energy reserves. Women (on average) are about 52 percent as strong as men in the upper body, and about 66 percent as strong in the lower.[4] Men, on average, have denser, stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments. This allows for heavier work.[5]
Men dissipate heat faster than women through their sweat glands.[citation needed] Women have a greater insulation and energy reserves stored in subcutaneous fat, absorbing endothermic heat less and retaining exothermic heat to a greater degree.[citation needed] Sex differences in endurance events are less significant than for sprinting events.[citation needed]
Men typically have larger tracheae and branching bronchi, with about 30 percent greater lung volume per body mass. They have larger hearts, 10 percent higher red blood cell count, higher hemoglobin, hence greater oxygen-carrying capacity. They also have higher circulating clotting factors (vitamin K, prothrombin and platelets). These differences lead to faster healing of wounds and higher peripheral pain tolerance.[5]
Women typically have more white blood cells (stored and circulating), more granulocytes and B and T lymphocytes. Additionally, they produce more antibodies at a faster rate than men. Hence they develop fewer infectious diseases and succumb for shorter periods.[5] Ethologists argue that women, interacting with other women and multiple offspring in social groups, have experienced such traits as a selective advantage.[6][7][8][9][10] Note that almost all examples of sexual dimorphism in humans are quantitative, and have some degree of overlap.
Some biologists theorise that a species' degree of sexual dimorphism is inversely related to the degree of paternal investment in parenting. Species with the highest sexual dimorphism, such as the pheasant, tend to be those species in which the care and raising of offspring is done only by the mother, with no involvement of the father (low degree of paternal investment).
Although there are many biologically-determined, sexually-dimorphic behaviours in other species, these have few, if any, implications for human society. However, analysis of sexually dimorphic human behavior naturally provokes controversy. One less controversial, but still hypothetical, area with considerable discussion in academic literature concerns potential evolutionary advantages associated with sexual competition (both intrasexual and intersexual) and short- and long-term sexual strategies.[11]
According to Daly and Wilson, "The sexes differ more in human beings than in monogamous mammals, but much less than in extremely polygamous mammals."[12]
D.M. Buss stated that "Males should prefer attributes in potential mates associated with reproductive value or fertility, depending on whether males in human evolutionary history have tended to seek long-term or short-term mating partners.[13] Specifically, if males in our evolutionary past have tended to seek short-term mating partners, selection should have favoured male preferences for females in their early 20s who show cues positively correlated with fertility. If males in our evolutionary past tended to seek long-term mating partners, selection should have favoured preferences for females in their mid-teens who show cues indicative of reproductive value. Evolutionary theorists differ on which of these they judge to be most likely."[14]

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