First, the facts: The vast majority of chronic pain patients are women; a disproportionate number of sufferers from irritable bowel syndrome are women; ditto fibromyalgia, headaches, osteoarthritis, and acute pain after surgeries. What's up with that, women? Geezer doesn't know, but Boston Globe health writer Judy Foreman takes a courageous look at the genetic, physiological, hormonal, and psycho-social factors that might contribute to this gender inequity. Foreman comes up, largely, with one word: hormones. She tells us that boys and girls show comparable patterns of pain until puberty, after which certain types of pain are more common in girls, and even if the incidence is the same, reported pain severity is more intense in girls than boys, especially for headaches and abdominal pain. In fact, the lifetime prevalence for migraines is 18 percent for women and 6 percent for men. The hormone theory runs into problems, says Foreman, when women reach menopause, as studies of post-menopausal women's response to pain are utterly inconclusive. Finally, Foreman points to the bull elephant in the room: In this culture, women are encouraged to express pain, and men to hide it. And hide it they do.
Read more in the Boston Globe on male and female responses to pain.
Funny … the US military maintains (through years of study) that the pain threshold of Women far exceed that of men.
Isn’t it interesting that Judy Foreman didn’t bother to consult them before publishing her article….
Well Girls, I’m sorry about this pain thing. You can probably thank your sister Eve for this. Gosh I’m glad to be a man! LOL
What about childbirth? No way men could handle that. At least not me. Broken bones, lacerations, no biggie. But childbirth, natural, NO WAY!