Cramping, bloating, gas. Wildly swinging from one gut-related extreme to the other. And travelling? A recipe for digestive disaster. If this all sounds (literally) painfully familiar, we hear you.
It's a fact that women are disproportionately affected by symptoms such as these, in comparison with men. A combination of hormonal and lifestyle factors means we're more likely to develop conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (studies such as this one, published in the Journal of Korean Medical Science, prove the point). And while there's a shortage of specifically female-based research, what we do know is that gastrointestinal disorders are more common in women (check out this study, from the journal Science), thought to be because oestrogen increases communication in the gut, and therefore pain signalling to the brain, too.
