Blog articles filed under: Conditions
Women and chronic pain
Posted March 08, 2024 by Alex Harris / Category: Conditions
Women and chronic pain
Posted Tuesday, Mar 5, 2024 by . Filed under Conditions
To celebrate International Women's Day at Brunswick Chiropractic we’d love to take the opportunity to talk about women's health. We feel it’s important to honour the struggles that women more often end up having to carry, especially the ones they have little control over such as chronic pain disorders.
A 2020 report showed that an estimated 1.8 million women are living with chronic pain compared to 1.5 million men.
Some of these chronic conditions include:
- fibromyalgia
- endometriosis
- multiple sclerosis
- migraines
- rheumatoid arthritis
These are just a few that are significantly more prevalent in the female population. Many of these are often dismissed as psychosomatic because they aren’t instantly visible to others.
Chronic pain conditions
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a condition that presents as widespread musculoskeletal pain in a wide variety of areas.
It is often combined with:
- fatigue,
- memory,
- sleep and
- mood issues.
Possible causes of Fibromyalgia
It is believed that women tend to develop this condition twice as often as men due to changes in hormones and higher stress levels in the body from menstruation, pregnancy and menopause. It can also occur because of genetics or environmental factors.
Fibromyalgia treatment
Although there isn’t a cure for fibromyalgia, there are however various treatment approaches that may help manage the symptoms and improve the quality of life for individuals with fibromyalgia. Key recommendations include:
- stress management strategies
- regular sleep schedule
- pace yourself with exercise
- balanced healthy diet (low-inflammation foods)
- physical therapies for maintenance.
At Brunswick Chiropractic all our myotherapists, remedial massage, osteopaths and chiropractors have trained in dealing with chronic pain.
Endometriosis
Endometriosis is another condition that can develop because of hormonal changes. It is a condition where tissue that’s similar to the uterus lining starts growing on the outside of the uterus.
This can make menstruation more painful than it would be normally around the pelvis and affect the sufferer's ability to become pregnant.
Pain is often more noticeable:
- During menstruation
- During or after sex
- When urinating or defecating
Possible causes of endometriosis
Research indicates that it tends to develop because of retrograde menstruation, which is when blood containing the endometrial cells flows back into the fallopian tubes into the pelvic cavity at the time when it would be flowing out.
Treatment options
There are several different management tools that can ease the symptoms and slow down the progression of it.
- Hormonal treatments
- Anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers.
- Surgery to have the lesions and adhesions removed.
Because patients often have associated lumbar, pelvic, and lower body pain, soft tissue treatment may be a useful pain management tool to minimise inflammation in the tissues and reduce the amount of pain management medications you may have to take.
Multiple Sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an immune-mediated disease, it’s believed it’s triggered by one or more environmental factors in a genetically susceptible person. This causes the immune system to attack the central nervous system, which is the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. When the nerve fibres are damaged it can cause things to misfire and disrupt the messages to the brain. This causes scar tissue to build up on the nerve fibres hence the name.
Research suggests women develop this condition more often than men 4 to 1 due to:
- Reproductive hormone imbalances
- Vitamin D absorption
- Differences in the immune system
- Genetics
- Increase in Inflammation in the body
Common symptoms include:
- Fatigue
- Balance issues
- Muscle weakness
- Numbness or tingling
- Vision problems
- Vertigo or dizziness
- Sexual dysfunction
- Bladder and bowel issues
- Cognitive and emotional changes
Treatment options
- Medications help the most with early diagnosis
- Physical therapy including myotherapy, osteopathy and chiropractic care
- Occupational therapy
- Speech language pathology
- Neuropsychology
Rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune condition that is experienced as chronic inflammation in at least 5 synovial joints. This can reduce their functionality, damage the bone and cartilage. It’s thought that hormones play a part in the progression of the disease because women often experience a remission in symptoms during pregnancy.
Other symptoms include:
- Swelling, pain and heat in the joints
- Fatigue
- Bilateral affected joints
- More stiffness in the morning
Causes
- Genetics
- Sex hormones
- Vitamin D deficiency
Treatment options
- Pain killers
- Omega 3 supplements
- Anti-immantory drugs
- Disease modifying antirheumatic drugs
- Corticosteroids
- Physical therapy (myotherapy, osteopathy and chiropractic) may be a great tool to help reduce some of the inflammation and reduce the need for strong painkillers.
What you can do
To maintain quality of life and functionality, it’s important to put yourself first and utilise the tools and services available to you to manage your symptoms.
Here at our Brunswick Chiro Osteo Myo we create personalised treatment plans, to cater to your specific conditions, so that your body isn’t holding you back from doing the things you love.
So often women’s pain is dismissed by others as a physical manifestation of psychological issues. Whether it is a result of that, still shouldn’t diminish the severe effect it may have on the individual. What’s often forgotten is that women tend also to have higher pain thresholds, so if a woman is complaining about being in pain instead of suffering through, it’s probably getting close to unbearable.
It’s hard to say why women develop these conditions more so than men, but research suggests it could often be because of genetics, hormonal imbalances, chronic inflammation, or a traumatic injury.
To reduce those peak levels of pain, it’s important to seek the appropriate help, whether there are dietary changes that can reduce the inflammation in the body, strengthening exercises that will support the affected structures, and of course, physical therapies to release any build-up of tension that may have developed as a result of the chronic condition.
Resources:
https://www.painaustralia.org.au/media/media-releases-2022/right-now-women-in-australia-are-more-likely-to-live-with-physical-painimpactin#:~:text=The%20Deloitte%20Cost%20of%20Pain,compared%20to%201.5%20million%20men
https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health-fibromyalgia#risks
https://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS/Who-Gets-MS/Women-with-MS#:~:text=Doctors%20don't%20know%20for,and%20estrogen%20play%20a%20role.
https://www.choicepain.com/blog/why-women-are-more-prone-to-fibromyalgia#:~:text=Women%20are%20reported%20to%20be,menstruation%2C%20menopause%2C%20or%20pregnancy
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/rheumatoid-arthritis#:~:text=Doctors%20do%20not%20know%20the,risk%20of%20developing%20rheumatoid%20arthritis.
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/rheumatoid-arthritis#:~:text=Doctors%20do%20not%20know%20the,risk%20of%20developing%20rheumatoid%20arthritis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19072521/#:~:text=Rheumatoid%20arthritis%20(RA)%20is%20two,in%20supporting%20the%20female%20prevalence.
Alex completed her Diploma of Remedial Massage at RMIT, then followed that up with the Advanced Diploma of Myotherapy to broaden her knowledge base and treatment techniques.
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