Endometriosis is a painful, chronic disease that affects 5.5 million women and girls in the USA and Canada, and millions more worldwide. It occurs when tissue like that which lines the uterus (called the endometrium) is found outside the uterus.This misplaced tissue develops into growths or lesions which respond to the menstrual cycle in the same way that the tissueof the uterinelining does:each month the tissue builds up, breaks down, and sheds. Menstrualbloodflows from the uterus and out of the body through the vagina, but the bloodand tissue shed from endometrial growths has no way of leaving the body.This results in internal bleeding,breakdown of the blood and tissue fromthe lesions, and inflammation — and can cause pain,infertility, scar tissue formation, adhesions, and bowel problems.

Obviously this is terrible to undergo. But, what is really upsetting to Jeanne and others in her support group is the way their pain has been dismissed by the medical community because it is of a feminine nature. Many go decades having their condition undiagnosed because their pain is completely dismissed by doctors. I hear similar stories from women about predominantly female pain diseases like fibromyalgia. 

Oh, I totally get that. During my first birth when my entire labia was severed and required about 25 stitches it was excruciating and I had to literally throw a temper tantrum before my OB/GYN would give me pain medication. “I can only give you 15,” she said. I felt I would have gotten more sympathy,empathy, compassion and medicine had I severed my finger. When the intern ripped through the stitches (to figure out why I had pain – uh, I just pushed a human through my vagina and my labia had to be reattached) there was no “fix” available and I was told I’d have to wait until the next baby to repair my mangled labia. And as the second OB/GYN ripped 25 more stitches out of my most tenderest skin without pain medication or a local anesthetic after my second and last child, I thought, “Why do they allow psychotic sadists to become obstetricians?”

As I could barely sit with my poor pained pudenda, my husband went in for a vasectomy. I noticed a huge discrepancy within the medical community when compared to men getting vasectomies. He was given a valium, a local anesthetic both during the procedure and the removal of stitches and a big bottle of refillable pain medication. Not to mention my undying gratitude for permanently preventing my vajayjay more heinous pain. They even gave him porn to make the semen testing process enjoyable. 

Why?  

According to an article, Women, Men and Ouch! the Painful Truth by Cathleen Medwick in O Magazine there is a very real difference in how the medical community perceives pain and treats it in women versus men.

In other words, this is not just a hysterical perception of mine and Jeanne’s this is a documented fact. Medwick talks about how difficult it was for her mother, who was dying of breast cancer, to get her pain treated or even garner any sympathy for it.

Medwick interviewed pain guru Jeffrey Mogil, PhD, director of the pain genetics laboratory at McGill University in Montreal. Mogil has apparently done something unheard of and revolutionary – he includes females in his pain studies.

That’s right. The scientific community has traditionally excluded women under the erroneous assumption that “females show too much variability in their responses due to hormonal cycling,” according to the article. 

Mogil is revolutionary because he noticed that women made up the vast majority of clinical pain patients. And so he thought to study them. (Am I the only one screaming, It’s 2008, what the hell took you so long? That’s a nose on your face.)

In his research he has discovered that women and men have a different genetic makeup and they experience pain differently. He believes, according to the article, that there are actually different neural circuits for men and women. He says this means that treating women with pain medication which is effective for men is not going to treat women’s pain adequately. Visa versa. 

Since most research excludes women, he believes, that’s resulted in inadequately treating women’s pain by using medications that were made for men. He also says women have a documented lower pain threshold. Saying that not only are women more likely to report pain, but we experience it as more painful. Other species do too, he says, citing female rats that flinch more than male rats responding to the same stimulus.It has recently been shown that estrogen influences pain sensitivity. Male rats given the hormone flinched in more pain than they did without the hormone. Testosterone, when injected in the female rat, reduced the response to pain. 

Women feel pain more acutely and yet:
Women are still twice as likely as men to be under-treated for pain.

Post from: Blisstree

Women’s Pain News