Why Women Suffer More Chronic Pain Than Men
Disparity Between Women and Men
There's a disparity between the number of people who suffer pain when you compare women and men. When you look at persistent and chronic pain this varies across different conditions but on the whole, women suffer more chronic pain than men.
For example, if you took something like migraine, women are found to suffer about three times more than men. If you take a condition like fibromyalgia the ratio is nine to one from women to men and when you look at autoimmune conditions as a whole eighty per cent of the cases are found in women.
The mechanism for these differences aren't fully understood, but they're found to be just like any other persistent pain condition, due to a variety of factors and these are thought to be biological psychological and sociological factors.
I'm going to go through some of them that the literature points out today and it may provide some clues about how you can do something for patients or yourself if you're suffering from persistent pain.
Remember these points are very general it doesn't mean all women exhibit these traits are all men exhibit the traits. I’m going to describe they're just some pointers to suggest why women may suffer more chronic or persistent pain than men.
Before I give you all these 10 reasons that are bad news for women, there is some good news at the end of the article, so hang on through to the end and you'll be able to see that the news isn't all bad.
1.Hormones
One of the obvious biological reasons is the difference in hormones between men and women. Before puberty, little boys and girls found to have no real difference in their experience with pain, but this does change from puberty.
In terms of oestrogen, we're not sure definitively what that does with regards to pain but some of the literature points to testosterone being protective in terms of pain and that proportion of the difference in testosterone between the sexes might be one factor.
2. Coping Techniques
When women deal with pain they use coping techniques, social support and emotion-focused techniques. This may mean because they're using that brain circuitry more. That emotional aspect of their brain, in terms of their pain experience, if they overuse them, potentially that complicates that relationship that can develop resistant pain.
3. Distraction
When you compare how men deal with the pain they use more distraction and problem-solving approaches to manage it or ignore it. Pretending that it hasn't even happened, that it is not even there might help in the short term, but it might help in the long term too.
4. Social Acceptance
The expression of pain is more socially acceptable in women than men and strangely that could lead to some bias in reporting pain. We all know how good it is to talk, but sometimes reliving the painful experience and re-engaging the emotions that are present as part of that can be dangerous when it comes to the development of persistent pain.
5. Emotional expression
Women tend to describe their pain in more emotional terms than men and be more expressive, but this potentially makes it harder for the objective medical community to understand what that person is saying in terms of diagnosis.
6. Objectivity
Men are more objective about talking about their pain and again when you think about the medical community, this is much easier for them to understand and identify what the problem is.
7. Willingness to Report Pain
Men are more unwilling to report their pain, so essentially more women report pain. So do men have the same amount of pain but they just don't talk about it and they don't report it? Maybe it looks like the ratio is higher because of that non-reporting?
8. Role as the Stress Absorber
Women have always played the stress absorber of their environment. If you think about this from an instinctual perspective they're the emotional hub of the family and they take on the stresses of that family and the stress of their spouses. They’re using the emotional circuitry of their brains much more. That's very relevant when you talk about persistent pain.
9. Economic Role
Women have a much more economic role now within family life than they ever did but that additional role doesn't take away the emotional demands that they've always carried. On top of that caring role and emotional responsibility they've carried for the family from an instinctual perspective, over the last hundred years they've developed additional roles. That has gone over and above what they already did in evolutionary terms.
10. Male Responsibility
This isn't a blame game. Blame plays no part in persistent pain, but number ten is maybe that men have not stepped up into the emotional role in the same way that women have stepped up in that economic role.
That imbalance might also be another pointer to why women suffer the level of overload that can lead to persistent pain. Again all these points are just generalisms, but they are found in the literature.
Fascinating Differences
It's fascinating when you consider the differences between men and women. Gabor Mate, the amazing Canadian physician and author of When The Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, highlights that changing role between men and women.
He gives examples from the 1930s and 40s when the incidence of multiple sclerosis between men and women was one to one. One woman would get multiple sclerosis for every man and yet 80 years later the incidence is three and a half times the amount of women to men and there isn't a biological reason for that in terms of diet or climate.
He points to those changing roles and the additional responsibility that women have taken on, maybe the additional responsibility the males haven't taken on as pointing towards it.
Not All Bad News
It isn't all bad news in terms of persistent pain and the development of that in women more than men. There is some good news.
Because of that adaptability and the way that women can easily access those emotional circuits and the way they express themselves in life they have an advantage. In persistent pain in chronic pain, they find it easier to reverse.
When you look at beliefs and men that do develop persistent pain, often the beliefs that have taken them there are strongly fixed. Men, therefore, may find it more difficult to express the emotions linked with that pain than women can.
Either way, recovery is possible for everyone.
Everyone can develop persistent pain and everyone can recover from it. There are so many ways to help people, so many ways to reverse it. Many beliefs prevented it both in the patient
I’m very grateful you're reading this article today, but now take a little bit more time for yourself and take the next step in your recovery
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