Who's Really in Pain?

Pain & Biology
Men and women are not the same, particularly when it comes to pain. They are anatomically distinct, biologically different; and they have diverse styles of thinking and communicating. In a recent literature review, "The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain," Dianne E. Hoffman and Anita J. Tarzian highlight one significant difference in the sexes by suggesting that men and women feel and deal with pain differently.

Pain is a subjective phenomenon.
It cannot be readily quantified; therefore physicians rely largely on patients' self-reporting to determine the severity of their pain. Only in the past decade has the medical research field recognized that women and men may experience illness and pain differently. In fact recent clinical pain studies found women reported more severe and frequent pain and pain of longer duration than men. Other studies suggest that women may have a varying level of pain tolerance, reflecting changes in hormone levels during their menstrual cycles.

How Do People Feel Pain?
Besides hormonal differences, structural differences between the central nervous systems and brains of men and women may affect how members of that sex feel pain. One structural difference this review cites is tissue thickness and sensory receptor density in women that may make their skin more sensitive to pain than men's. Although the disparities between men's and women's responses to pain are well documented, it is unclear whether these differences are rooted in biology or in coping strategies and pain expression, or in both.

Read more at the AMA Journal of Ethics.