Feb 20, 2012
— read in fullDo women feel more pain then men?
Jan 24, 2012
A new medical study says that female patients nearly always report worse levels of pain.
The study, conducted at Stanford University, looked at the pain scale ratings from over 72,000 patients for a range of common medical conditions ranging from indigestion to breathing problems. A pain scale rating is a number from 0 (none) to 10 (very severe) chosen by a patient to describe their level of pain. The researchers discovered that women reported more pain on average in 39 of the 47 different conditions studied, particularly for things like neck pain and migraines.
These findings go against previous beliefs that women are less likely to report serious pain because they go through childbirth. This produces large amounts of oestrogen, a hormone which releases chemicals called endorphins that fight pain. Oestrogen is also produced at different times during the menstrual cycle.
Report author Atul Butle said the fact men and women seem to feel different levels of pain meant medical staff should pay more attention to a patient’s gender when treating them. However, he also admitted that some patients might have different ideas about what counted as ‘severe’ pain, and that men might not report as much pain because they wanted to look ‘macho’.
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