'Women left in pain'

[ErrolTheDragon]

More 'invisible women' in the Times today.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/women-wait-a-decade-in-pain-for-arthritis-diagnosis-bvsp63wn9?shareToken=979f0030df3b7789d127764b58f611d7

The first comment from someone who purports to work in rheumatology about sums it up. Depressing attitude.

''The National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (Nass) said a myth that the disease mainly affected men meant that women faced problems in getting diagnoses.''
There aren't enough eyerolls for this.

Very depressing read. Thank you for the share.

Thank you for sharing. Like others have said, it's depressing to read that yet again women's symptoms and issues are being downplayed.

This was me. Over twenty years of symptoms ignored or not linked plus so much money on private physio and various other alternative remedies. It took a year of pain every day, being unable to sit or work and a threat to my eyesight before diagnosis. Further down the line my anger grows.

I'm very sorry to hear that.

Hopefully the report - and the times (i hope other media too) publicising it, and the support org - will help people with this condition get proper help. It didn't sound like it was great for men, but not so absolutely shittily dismissive.

(The times had the link to the piece on the front page of the app version, not buried)

This reminds me of a menstrual health article that said it was a myth/all in the mind that periods made women feel exhausted, or that we must be suddenly eating junk food that sapped our energy. Cue a ton of furious comments from actual women. I was livid! The article hs since disappeared or I would share it.

Likewise endometriosis and adenomyosis, don't even get me started on those. I'm going through it all again now since my latest ultrasound showed more problems with my ovaries, yet I'm having to fight for anyone to investigate it.

I was at rheumatology yesterday to see my OT. She said they are trying to improve time to diagnosis. I wonder whether those at the top are not making the links though. Attitudes towards women as 'hysterical' and hormonal (ie just have to put up with it) are endemic. If you get someone who listens it feels like winning the lottery and it shouldn't have to be that way. So many of my health problems in life now make sense with my AS diagnosis.

I would recommend the book Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn, which is a history of women's healthcare. The author has lupus which went undiagnosed for years despite countless visits to the doctor.

A memorable page in the book talks about how, in 1985, psychiatrists simplified criteria for somatisation diagnoses by studying 85 women who had been suffering with health difficulties that began before they were 30. They found seven defining symptoms including shortness of breath, dysmenorrhea, burning pain in sexual organs, lump in throat, amnesia, vomiting and painful extremities. It was SDBLAVP for short but they used the mnemonic 'Somatisation Disorder Besets Ladies and Vexes Physicians' and labelled them neurotic hysterical hypochondriacs.

Sorry to hear that @CyanCyan - I hope someone pulls their finger out to get you the care you need.

Someone just bought me that book for my birthday! I have it ready to start 🙂

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3690315/

'There is increasing evidence for sex differences in pain sensitivity and analgesic response.

Clinical pain, both acute and chronic, and experimental pain models all show sex differences.

While chronic pain is commoner in women the evidence on pain severity is less clear.

Further study is needed of underlying mechanisms, including the contribution of hormonal and genetic factors.'

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19411059/

'The growing body of evidence that has accumulated in the past 10 to 15 years continues to indicate substantial sex differences in clinical and experimental pain responses, and some evidence suggests that pain treatment responses may differ for women versus men.'

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27364392/

'It is becoming very evident that gender differences in pain and its relief arise from an interaction of genetic, anatomical, physiological, neuronal, hormonal, psychological and social factors which modulate pain differently in the sexes. Experimental data indicate that both a different modulation of the endogenous opioid system and sex hormones are factors influencing pain sensitivity in males and females.'

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00895-3

'Pain responses also seem to change throughout life, around the time hormone levels rise or fall. Studies looking only at biological sex have found that, at puberty, the rates of pain conditions rise more in girls than in boys. And as people age, and some hit menopause, hormonal levels change again, and sex differences in chronic pain rates begin to disappear. Pregnancy changes pain responses, too. Mogil’s group reported in 2017 that, early in pregnancy, mice switch from a typically female, microglia-independent mechanism of pain sensitization to a more male-associated one that involves microglia. By late pregnancy, the animals don’t seem to feel chronic pain at al'