Editorial – The Man Cold

I  owe my husband an apology.

Last week, he had a cold. A MAN cold. And instead of bringing him chicken soup, I gave him grief.

It’s not that I am mean or anything. It’s just that I get irritated over the fact that women are expected to keep going, sick or not,when men have the luxury of taking a load off and hide under a blanket for a week at the first sign of a sniffle. You could say I’m just envious.

But are women really expected to keep going? Or do we put this pressure on ourselves? Would the world really stop turning if we took a day off? Would our entire families be on the brinks of annihilation just because we didn’t get out of bed for a couple of days? Would our husbands give us hell for not being on post? I doubt it. But we sure do take comfort in the thought that we are this indispensable!

Women have a tendency to want to control things. Being taught we are the “weaker sex” from a very early age, we grow defenses. We want to control our surroundings. We need to have everything in check. It makes us feel secure, needed, powerful.

We don’t stop when we are sick because we’ve been told we are less than men, fragile and delicate. “Oh really now? Let me show you how weak I am! I have a double ear infection, a laryngitis, tonsilitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, I’m coughing up blood, I’m stuffed to the max, I’m covered in hives but I’m still going! I REFUSE to go down!”

Are we really THAT tough or are we simply wired differently, made to handle pain better than men do?

After doing some research, I was surprised to find out that some studies actually claim there is such a thing as the Man Cold! Dr Amanda Ellison seem to think that men really do suffer more with coughs and sniffles. They have more temperature receptors located in their brain and this, apparently, leads them to be more affected by cold and flu symptoms than us, women, are.

“I’m just throwing it out there. There is no hard evidence that the feelings are worse in males in females,” said Ellison in an article from the Telegraph published in 2013, “this is a possible cause – but the argument will rage on. It is part of the whole argument about the differences between men and women and how their behaviour can be influenced by differences in their brains.”

Maybe men are just wiser? Maybe taking care of yourself, resting and taking it easy when your immune system is at an all time low is the right thing to do? What do you think ladies and gents? Is there such a thing as THE MAN COLD?

I soon will find out. With such a strong virus in the house, I certainly will be next and this time, I’ll be a man about it!

MAN COLD (as defined by the urban dictionary) A man cold is found exclusively upon the Y chromosome. This particular strand of the common cold results in individuals acting like a little whiner and crying about a stuffy nose. Treatments for this include: suck it up, we dont care, and we’re not your mother.

Antonym: the woman cold in which a woman can be dying of internal bleeding and manage to pass it off as just a flesh wound.