Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday, May 12th. A day when we celebrate all the moms in our lives or are celebrated as one. A very special day. Just as important, May 12th also kicks off the National Institute of Health’s National Women’s Health Week. Hopefully, it will bring needed awareness to the challenges that women face while trying to be heard when discussing their health. Here are a few of the very concerning challenges that I have taken directly from the NIH.gov site: (www.nih.gov/nwhw)
- Delay in Diagnosis: Women are more likely to have their symptoms overlooked or not taken as seriously as men, which can delay finding out what’s really wrong.
- Pain is Dismissed or Undertreated: Studies show that when women are in pain, they’re less likely to be given painkillers compared to men. This means their pain may not be managed as well.
- Mental Health Misunderstandings: Sometimes, when women have physical health symptoms, they are incorrectly diagnosed as having mental health issues like depression or anxiety. This can delay the right treatment. This can be especially common for autoimmune diseases like lupus or chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia.
- Weight Stigma: Some health care providers with weight stigma might make negative assumptions about people in larger bodies. This can have a negative impact on the relationship and communication between health care provider and patient. This can lead to health care providers spending less time discussing a patient’s concerns and less likely to perform preventative health screenings.
- Racial Bias: Women of color often face discrimination in the health care space, including dismissive attitudes by health care providers or unequal access to quality care. This bias can result in delayed diagnoses, inadequate treatment, and poorer health outcomes for underserved and underrepresented communities.
- Not Enough Research Including Women: For a long time, a lot of health studies didn’t include enough or any women and didn’t look at how medical conditions and treatments affect women compared to men. Although improving in recent years, this gap in information can affect how well health care providers understand and treat women’s health issues. Several federal agencies are actively working to close this gap and engage in research that meaningfully includes and focuses on women.
- Autoimmune Disease Diagnosis and Treatment: Women are more likely to develop autoimmune diseases, which occur when the body’s immune system attacks its own cells. It often takes a long time and many health care appointments to get a proper diagnosis and treatment.
- Reproductive Health Concerns: Conditions that affect women’s reproductive systems, such as endometriosis, fibroids, and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), often don’t get diagnosed quickly. It can take years for women to find out what’s causing their symptoms because their pain or concerns may not be taken seriously.
Please pay attention to this one!
Did you know that women are seven times more likely to be wrongly sent home from the emergency department in the middle of a heart attack? That’s because healthcare providers misunderstand women’s symptoms or do not apply new research knowledge showing the differences in women’s symptoms compared to men. Women may feel extremely tired, dizzy, or nauseous during a heart attack—signs that are easy to overlook. This shows the critical need for health care providers to truly listen to and validate women’s concerns and educate themselves about these differences. (Source: womenshealth.gov/nwhw)
How to empower yourself when dealing with your health:
- Empower yourself by being your own advocate. It usually takes longer for women to get a diagnosis than men!
- Write down your health concerns before your health care appointment and get answers.
- It is okay to move on to another provider if you are not comfortable with your current one. This is your health!
- With so much information available, some from unreliable sources, it is important that you obtain information from reputable places. The health claims that seem to be “too good to be true” usually are.
Please pass this on to the women in your lives as it might save a life.
I’ll be posting nutritional and physical activity tidbits next week as we celebrate!
Be well,
Barbara