Survey: Women have more headaches

TORONTO, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Women report experiencing headaches more often than men, and they experience somewhat more pain than men, a Canadian survey indicates.

"Pain doesn't discriminate against gender; however, with headache pain, women tend to be more expressive in reporting their pain than men, and tend to be more proactive in managing it," Dr. Gary Shapero, a family physician in Toronto with a special interest in headache and pain management, says in a statement.

The Tylenol Canadian Pain Survey, conducted by Vision Critical, reveals Canadian men and women consider themselves to have a relatively high tolerance to pain.

The survey also reveals that there are differences in how men and women manage certain types of pain, like headaches. Ninety percent of Canadians used some sort of coping mechanism to help manage the pain of their last headache.

The most popular coping mechanism used by Canadians for headache pain management is over-the-counter medication -- used by 44 percent. However, 29 percent of men and 25 percent of women choose bed rest while 6 percent of men and 4 percent of men choose massage therapy for pain management.

The online survey among a randomly selected, representative sample of 1,027 adult Canadians was conducted Nov. 16-17, has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.