Unsurprisingly, Women Experience Pain Differently Than Men. Now, Scientists Know How
There’s a laundry list of things that men and women experience differently, but new research finds that pain may be yet another one.
The study, which was published in PNAS Nexus on October 14, may help explain why women are more prone to experience chronic pain and tend to respond less to treatment with opioid medications. Here’s what the study found—and what a pharmacologist wants you to know.
Meet the expert: Jamie Alan, PhD, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University.
What did the study find?
For the study, researchers analyzed data from two clinical trials that involved 98 people. Study participants included those who were healthy and those who were diagnosed with chronic lower back pain.
Study participants went through a meditation training program and then practiced meditation while taking either a placebo or high dose of naloxone, a drug that is often used to reverse opioid overdoses but also stops opioids produced in the body from working.
The participants were given a painful (but harmless) heat stimulus to the back of the leg, while researchers measured how much pain relief the participants had from meditation when the opioid system was blocked or still intact.
The researchers found a few different things. One is that the meditation-based pain relief was less effective in men when the opioid system was blocked, which suggested that they tend to rely on the body’s opioid production to reduce pain.
On the other hand, naloxone actually increased the benefits of meditation-based pain relief in women, which suggested that women rely on non-opioid mechanisms to reduce pain.
Do men and women process pain differently?
It seems that way. It’s important to point out that this is just one study, but previous research has found that men and women experience pain differently and even process pain signals differently.
“Pain is subjective, so it is very hard to quantify reliably,” says Jamie Alan, PhD, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University. “Also, you wonder about societal expectations with regards to pain. There are studies that note that women report pain more frequently compared to men. Do this mean they have more pain or more intense pain, or is it just more acceptable for a women to report pain?”
Are pain medications less effective for women?
It’s tricky to lump an entire sex together, but research has suggested that some pain medications may be less effective for women. One 2021 study found that ibuprofen tends to be more effective in men than women, while another study discovered that prednisone may cause more uncomfortable side effects in women.
But Alan says there isn’t enough data to conclude that some pain medications are less effective for women. “There are physiological differences between men and women, and notably, there are differences in drug metabolism between men and women,” she says. “It makes sense that men and women may respond to pain medication differently.”
Which techniques reduce pain in women?
While researchers generally agree that more research is needed into pain management techniques in women, there are no current recommendations that say women should have certain medications over men for pain, and vice versa.
“It is best to assess the patient holistically rather than pick a treatment plan for pain based on sex only,” Alan says. “It’s important that we do not make such broad generalizations based on one study.”
But, of course, if you’re taking a medication for pain and aren’t getting relief, it’s important to speak up. Your doctor should be able to recommend an alternative.
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