Lesbians Have More Health Problems Than Heterosexual Women

A recent research by American doctors has shown that lesbians and bisexual women have health problems much more often that their heterosexual peers. During the study researchers revealed various factors related to physical and psychological well being.

The results have shown that one of the main problems of lesbians and bi-sexual women is smoking: it turned out that there are twice more smokers among lesbians and bisexual women than among heterosexual women. What is more, lesbians turned out to consume alcohol 30 percent more often.

According to Jude Comfort, the leader of the study lesbians and bisexual women consume more alcohol as they spend much more time in clubs and bars than heterosexual women.

The results of the previous studies also had shown that lesbians have more health problems than heterosexual women. Jude Comfort says that these problems might be related to superstitions and discrimination, that leads to great stress.

Scientists say that homophobia does affect health. This concerns both external homophobia and internal homophobia. External homophobia comes from other people while internal homophobia is when a person assimilates stereotypes and negative attitude of the society and, as a result has many psychological problems.

According to Comfort t well-being of a person depends on his or her attitude towards his/her sexuality. If a person is not satisfied with his/ her sexuality and has problems with self-esteem, than health problems are likely to occur.

The study has shown that lesbians and bisexual women 30 % more often suffer from depression, they 20 percent more often apply to psychotherapists, and they 20 percent more often have extra weight. Comfort says that another problem is that medical society ignores homosexual people.

"There are many social factors related to sexual orientation and these factors do influence health. At the same time there are almost no programs targeted at homosexual people. It is evident that many lesbians are absolutely healthy, but the statistics shows that a special program for homosexuals is needed.