Back to school is over, but not the pressure that rests (too often) on the shoulders of mothers. Women are much more exposed to stress and fatigue than men. This is what emerges from a survey carried out by the Quintessens Institute for Medoucineplatform for making appointments in Natural Healing (1). Women report being more tired than men (68% of women against 57% of men), more anxious and stressed (53% against 43%), more depressed (35% against 29%). If they had to make an appointment with an alternative medicine practitioner, it would be first and foremost for sleep and fatigue problems (35% of women versus 25% of men).
The fault, of course, with the famous “mental burden ». “We tend to forget ourselves easily: we were designed like that! emphasizes Flore Nicolas naturopath, practitioner in hypnosis and trainer at Isupnat (French center for training in naturopathy). In women, for example, the effect of oxytocin, also known as ” love hormone translates into an attachment of the mother to the child. As a result, women are particularly empathetic, generous but also very defensive: they are the warriors of the family! » emphasizes Flore Nicolas naturopath, practitioner in hypnosis and trainer at Isupnat (French center for training in naturopathy). We often hear that women have this ability to do several things at the same time, but that’s not true! Our brain is made to do one thing at a time. Women will simply move faster than a man from one task to another because they have been used to doing it for a long time. And that leads to mental overload.
Women are warriors
But it’s not just the mental load, there’s also the exit from covid, which is more difficult for mothers to blame. “ I see the impact of the release of covid every day in my office, continues Flore Nicolas. During the pandemic, mothers had to take on the whole organization: we had to manage the masks, the schools that were closing, the meals eaten more often at home; It also turned their work organization upside down, some women had to stop working or ask to telecommute more.e…Since always and it hasn’t changed, the woman is always asked to take care of the children, she is the guardian of the home. During the covid, they necessarily cared less about them… In my opinion, this led to more stress and depression”.
But if it has greatly turned our daily lives upside down, the covid has also changed our relationship to alternative medicine. According to this Quintessens survey for Medoucine, 57% of women today have used it (compared to 39% of men). 92% of them think that alternative medicine can improve their well-being (11% more than men) and 89% agree that they are good complements to conventional medicine (against 76% men) .
Covid, one more thinker for women
“They had to anticipate the problems, try to prevent the children from being covid and that meant using natural medicines, continues the naturopath. For the therapist, the pandemic has been synonymous with openness to practices that complement traditional medicine: “ We put words on our little ailments, she explains (note: we are obviously talking about “little ailments” and not heavy pathologies). The covid was felt more harshly by people who ate badly, who hydrated badly, had no time to practice any activity. The pandemic has forced us to be more in tune with our bodies, people said to themselves: ok, I’m going to the doctor to respond to a consequence but isn’t it also interesting to work on the cause and on my “ground” who was tired, weaker? Women asked themselves the question more because they are more informed on the subject: women’s magazines and sites have enormously put forward the practices of alternative medicine and have multiplied the testimonials explaining what worked. “.
For this reason, 90% of women today (against 77% of men) think that certain alternative medicines should be reimbursed by social security, in particular osteopathy. “Four years ago, explains the naturopath, there were only 8 mutuals that offered reimbursement for what are called “accompaniment techniques”. Today, there are more than forty! »
(1) The survey was conducted online from September 7 to 12, 2022 among a sample of 1,000 people representative of the French population aged 18 and over. Quota method and adjustments applied to the following variables: sex, age, socio-professional category and region of the interviewee