How Do YOU Battle Stress? New Study Finds That Women Binge Eat, While Men Watch Porn
Who knew stereotypes could be so accurate?
You know the stereotype of the sad, messy, weepy woman we see in cheesy rom-coms, who cries into a pint of ice cream or something after a particularly rough day?
Well, it turns out that stereotype isn’t a total myth, but a brutal fact of life that just might be 100 percent accurate. I guess Hollywood wasn’t exaggerating after all.
According to a recent study by London’s University College, it was found that women prefer to smother their sorrows with greasy, fatty foods, whereas men opt to watch porn or have sex when they’re feeling a little down and need a nice pick-me-up.
For the study, researchers surveyed 115 men and 250 women on how they deal with stress and what they do when they want to relax, and it was found that 51 percent of women drown themselves in comfort food to calm anxiety, compared to a lesser 31 percent of men.
But just why do people feel the need to binge on artery-clogging foods when they’re stressed out? Well, it has to do with your adrenal glands, and the stress hormone it releases, called cortisol.
When we’re stressed, our adrenals release cortisol, and cortisol increases your appetite. And obviously, if your appetite is in overdrive, you’re going to eat everything you can get your hands on.
On the other hand, the study also found that 27 percent of dudes say they’d rather have sex when they need to unwind, relative to only 11 percent of women. From these findings, we can conclude that women love food, and men love sex. But we already knew this.
Lead researcher John Barry says: “For men, having sex is about dissociating from whatever troubles they are having at that particular time – it is escapism. The findings really play into the stereotype of a depressed woman gorging on chocolate and the man looking at porn on his computer.
“There are endorphins released during sex, so it provides a pleasurable feeling, which can act as a type of medication. It could be that men are just wired differently than women, they naturally have a higher libido so they fall back on this behaviour to cope.”
So, yeah. Like I said before, women binge eat when they’re sad, and men have sex or watch a lot of porn. Good stuff.
Well, that was exciting. I don’t know what I’m ever going to do with this information, but at least I know it. The more you know, right?
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