Humans Have a Vital Sixth Sense for Health

While most people are familiar with the traditional five senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste), not everyone is aware of our additional sense known as interoception.

Interoception pertains to our perception of the body’s internal state. It enables us to sense and comprehend internal signals regulating crucial bodily functions such as hunger, thirst, body temperature, and heart rate.

Although often overlooked, interoception is a profoundly significant sense, ensuring the optimal functioning of every bodily system.

It achieves this by indicating when the body might be out of balance—for example, triggering the urge to drink when thirsty or prompting the removal of clothing layers when overheated.

Interoception also plays a crucial role in mental health, influencing various psychological processes such as decision-making, social skills, and emotional wellness.

Implications for Mental Health Disorders

Many mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, frequently exhibit disturbances in interoception. This disruption may also elucidate the shared symptoms among many mental health conditions, such as disrupted sleep or fatigue.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding, we synthesized data from 93 studies examining interoception in both men and women. Our focus was on investigations exploring individuals’ perception of heart, lung, and stomach signals through various tasks.

For instance, some studies required participants to count their heartbeats, while others tasked participants with discerning whether a flashing light coincided with their stomach contractions or tested their ability to detect changes in their breath while using a device that impedes normal breathing.

Gender Disparities in Interoception

Our analysis revealed gender differences in interoception. Specifically, women demonstrated significantly lower accuracy in tasks focusing on the heart (and to some extent, the lungs) compared to men.

These differences were not attributable to factors such as participants’ effort during the task or physiological variances like body weight or blood pressure.

While significant disparities were observed in tasks related to heartbeat perception, findings for other tasks were less conclusive.

This ambiguity may stem from a limited number of studies examining lung and stomach perception. Consequently, it might be premature to determine whether men and women differ in their perception of these signals.

Psychological well-being

Our discoveries could be significant in elucidating the reasons behind the higher prevalence of various common mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, in women compared to men, starting from puberty onward.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, including genetic factors, hormonal influences, personality traits, and exposure to stress or childhood adversity.

However, given the significance of interoception for overall well-being, it is plausible that variations in interoception could partly elucidate why women are more prone to experiencing anxiety and depression than men.

Challenges with interoception can impact multiple areas, including emotional, social, and cognitive functioning, all of which are acknowledged as risk factors for various mental health disorders.

Understanding the distinctions in how men and women perceive interoceptive cues may also hold significance for mental illness treatment. Recent research suggests that enhancing interoception can have positive effects on mental health. Additionally, studies indicate that men may rely more on interoceptive signals, such as those from the heart, when processing their emotions, while women tend to exhibit greater attention to interoceptive cues.

Implications for Treatment

This suggests that treatments aimed at targeting or enhancing interoception may yield more favorable outcomes for certain individuals, while alternative approaches may be more effective for others. This is an area that future research will need to explore.

Although these differences have been identified, the underlying causes remain unclear.

Researchers have proposed several theories, including variations in physiological and hormonal changes that occur in most men and women. Moreover, variations in how individuals are instructed to interpret their emotions or interoceptive signals, such as pain, may contribute to these differences.

Gaining a deeper understanding of all the factors influencing interoceptive ability may prove crucial for developing improved treatments for various mental health conditions in the future.

Read the original article on: Science Alert

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