It’s creepy how ignorant we women are, in part, about our bodies. But it is even more sinister that it is unfortunately the same in medicine. Because our body is also discriminated as a research object. Our author checks the facts.
So far, drugs have mainly been tested on men
Medicine is a male domain, and we do not mean doctors and nursing staff, but the male body as a test and research object. For a long time, pharmaceuticals in research were only tested on men or male animals, even those intended to cure diseases that mainly affect women.
The problem is: Just because men tolerate the drug well doesn’t mean that women do the same. Although it was recognized at the beginning of the 1990s that drugs work differently in women than they do in men (e.g. aspirin), it is only now, around 30 years later, that a change is taking place. The reason: security considerations. Last but not least, the thalidomide disaster of the 50s and 60s made the pharmaceutical industry very cautious about women as test subjects in clinical studies. The fear that long-term effects of a drug test could occur during pregnancy or the birth of a child is just too great Dr. Michael Busse opposite Pharma-Fakten.de. In addition, women are subject to hormonal fluctuations that could falsify the results of a study and render them unusable. Accordingly, the participation of women makes the undertaking more complex, complicated and costly.
There are now guidelines for gender distribution in clinical studies, but the proportion of men and women is not balanced. This is established by the Association of Research Drug Manufacturers. V. (VFA) with the fact that the differences are not so much in the sexes, but rather an interplay of different factors such as age, lifestyle, diet and co. Therefore, the current goal is not necessarily gender-specific, but rather personalized medicine.
Women wait longer for pain medication
“Women have children too, so they can endure pain better because of it” – an image that persists. That also showed one University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law study: Doctors wait an average of 16 minutes longer than a man before a woman is given painkillers in the emergency room. The chance that women will get opiates for pain relief is up to 25 percent lower than with men. So ladies, grit your teeth!
Medicines often overdosed
That our body differs from the male is not only obvious on the outside. The body composition, our hormonal balance and our metabolism are also different from men. However, these facts are only rarely taken into account in the dosage of drugs, which means that some drugs either do not work at all or work differently and active ingredients – in vaccinations, for example – are often overdosed.
Heart attack, tumors and co.
Chest pain, difficulty breathing, nausea, arm or abdominal pain: typical symptoms of a heart attack – in a man. A heart attack often expresses itself very differently in a woman. But even when women go to the doctor or the emergency room with the same symptoms, they are less likely to be screened for a heart attack. Usually the symptoms are attributed to hormonal causes such as menopause or psychological problems. In a 65-year-old woman, it takes an average of 4.5 hours before the heart attack is diagnosed and she is admitted to the hospital. Shockingly, this time window often depends on the gender of the medical staff. Women have a better chance of surviving a heart attack if they are treated by a doctor, shows one US study. We hardly need to mention how this can end.
But even if she survived the heart attack, that doesn’t mean that things are looking up now. So-called ABC therapy (aspirin, beta blockers, cholesterol-lowering drugs) is often used to prevent another heart attack. And here we are again with the different effectiveness of drugs: For example, while aspirin can protect healthy men from a heart attack, it has little effect on women. The side effects of beta blockers are stronger in women than in men, and cholesterol-lowering drugs are tested almost exclusively in men, although older women tend to need them more than men. So it is questionable how effective the therapy is in women.
Serious illnesses are recognized later
This is not just about heart attacks. If women go to the doctor with complaints, the symptoms are in very many cases attributed to stress, menopause or the psyche before a closer look is taken to see what causes are behind them. It is hardly surprising that six out of eleven cancers are often discovered much later than in men.
PMS, endometriosis and vaginismus have hardly been researched
That the female body is still a taboo is also shown by the fact that it has not been well researched. This mainly applies to diseases that affect our sexual organs, such as Lychen Sclerousus or vaginismus, but also endometriosis, lipedema and fibromyalgia. And that despite the fact that many women suffer from it. Medical interest is surprisingly low for the large number of people affected.
Menstrual cramps are not taken seriously
Well, do you have your days, or why are you in such a bad mood? A saying that each of us has heard not just once in their life. Unfortunately, what is supposed to be funny is not at all. Menstrual cramps are not something that should be belittled. Some women can barely hold themselves up in the pain, others are tired, exhausted and just want to go to bed. Once a month our body goes crazy. Once a month we are visited by this uncomfortable feeling in the abdomen, which feels as if our body has been completely refurbished from the inside. A loose, fuzzy saying is exactly what we need then, especially from a man. But hey, it’s not a disease, so why should we complain when we can barely sit at our desks.
PMS has hardly been researched, but erectile dysfunction has
90 percent of all women suffer from PMS, 19 percent of men suffer from erectile dysfunction. There are five times as many studies on the latter as on PMS. Funnily enough, it’s the other way around with contraceptives. There is little interest in the pill for men, the pill for women is on the way. Hormones: That’s our thing … we don’t have to say more, do we?
It is time …
… that something will change, that we should properly educate our children, that our mothers get to know their bodies and that we at the doctor’s office are more than a hormone-controlled, stressed man whose psyche is a little damaged. We want to be taken seriously and to be able to trust that our health will be taken care of in the same way. And of course there are: Doctors who are committed and doctors who research women’s health. Unfortunately, the former are not easy to find, the latter often fail due to funding. Unfortunately, we women are often not lucrative enough.