When it comes to pain, women have an ace up their sleeve: childbirth. Some people think that men seem to be naturally more tolerant of most injuries than women, but they have never experienced which extreme pain in the delivery room. The pregnant woman’s body changes a bit during the last trimester of pregnancy, especially the last 18 days. Pain thresholds are raised, opioid receptors for pain relief are in a highly activated state, and some hormones for pain relief are at peak release. In fact, even women who have given birth have a greater tolerance for pain than women who have not given birth. While women can tolerate the pain of childbirth, studies have found that they are more sensitive to most pain than men. And over the course of their lives, they will experience even more pain than men. The incidence of osteoarthritis pain is 40% higher in women than in men; 1 in 5 women have migraines compared to 1 in 17 men; and fibromyalgia is 9 times more common in women than in men. The difference in the incidence of pain by gender does not indicate that men are stronger than women. Rather, it is determined by the different ways in which pain is transmitted in men and women. If a man and a woman place their hands on a hot pan at the same time, different parts of the brain are activated: the cognitive and analytical areas of the male brain are activated, while the limbic system, the emotional area of the female brain, is activated. Is the emotional component of pain more involved in women, and do women amplify pain? Not sure. When enduring pain, women show more sensitivity, while men are much calmer. Some researchers have attributed this to differences in social roles, with women often expressing pain through crying or other open forms, while men are expected to be stoic and firm. But an interesting experiment disproves this hypothesis. Researchers let male and female experimenters grasp ice cubes at the same time, who held on longer to get more monetary rewards, but the results found that men will still hold on longer than women. Women are naturally more sensitive to external changes, which may also make them more likely to feel painful stimuli, plus women are prone to anger and depression, which may exacerbate pain.