Oh hey everybody. This week on Ask Cristen I'm going to share a secret---ooooooh--about
Professor Fiance that I don't know that he would want me telling the internet about.
I mean it's not like a huge deal so I feel like it's okay that I tell you but maybe just
like don't tell him I told you, okay?
So this week's Ask Cristen question is about doctors just being bad doctors. I have been
really fortunate I feel like with my medical care in life thus far. I only had one hilariously
horrible gynecologist. But about Professor Fiance's secret-ish thing, he doesn't trust
doctors. He tends to think that a lot of doctors are just a copay hungry racket. But onto the
Ask Cristen question. It comes from Maka who in the YouTube comment on last week's Ask
Cristen video linked to an article in the Atlantic Magazine titled 'How Doctor's Take
Women's Pain Less Seriously'. And Maka requested, 'Please talk about this!' Quickly I want to
note that when it comes to this unhealthy relationship between patients and doctors
it's not just a woman thing. Studies show patterns of medical neglect or mistreatment
correlated not only with patient gender but also patient income, ethnicity and weight.
But if we do focus in on a female patient population things get consistently bad when
it comes to pain treatment. It could be anything from oh I went running and I twisted my ankle.
Ouch. Things start to get a bit more complicated when we're dealing with these invisible kinds
of issues like migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, vulvodynia, fibromyalgia, chronic
fatigue syndrome. There's a landmark study about this that came out in 2001 called, 'The
Girl Who Cried Pain' and the study authors concluded quote, 'Women are more likely to
be treated less aggressively in their initial encounters with the healthcare system until
they prove they are as sick as male patients.' And the complexity of female pain management
at the doctor's office stems partially from the fact that yes women and men do experience
pain differently. Studies have found that across our lifetimes women tend to report
more pain. I mean, hello, insert period cramps joke here people. But I wrote an entire article
about this, 'Do Men and Women Experience Pain Differently?' over at HowStuffWorks.com and
I researched and explored how male and female brains process pain through different neural
networks. Women's pupils even dilate faster in response to painful stimuli compared to
men's pupils which is notable because our pupil dilation is controlled by our autonomic
nervous system which means that that pain response is not necessarily under our conscious
control so [pained laughter] women simply live more painful existences and could you
say that this is proof that women are the weaker sex? No. Let us not mix up pain sensitivity
with weakness because yeah those are two different things. So a host of research has confirmed
that women experience more chronic and severe pain compared to men but get a load of this
statistic. If a man and a woman walk into an emergency room both complaining of acute
abominable pain, across the United States the dude is going to wait an average of 49
minutes before he is administered some kind of analgesic whereas a woman is going to wait
65 minutes. Anyone who is experienced any kind of severe pain, 16 minutes feels like
a long time. Why are so many doctors and nurses doubting female patients? The primary answer
that I've seen to this has to do with socialization where on the pro side of things, women and
girls are culturally allowed to be more emotional but because we are considered to be the more
emotional and even yes weaker sex, that leads some doctors who are often very pressed for
time, to assume that maybe the women's pain isn't such a big deal because oh well she's
just being emotive. As a not a doctor, I don't really have a solution that I can immediately
implement within the medical community at large but I think this is an opportunity to
encourage all of us to take women and girls more seriously and disentangle this general
myth that emotion and logic cannot coexist. Sometimes crying is okay, sometimes yelling
is okay, sometimes saying things in a very dramatic way is okay. Now I really want to
hear from all of you, have you ever experienced or know someone who has experienced the doubting
doctor? Clearly this is a conversation that we need to be having because a lot of people
are suffering and in pain and not getting the treatment that they need and really deserve
because we, all of us, don't believe them. And I'm not talking like hypochondria situation
here, that's another video for another time. Let me know in the comments below. Thanks
to everybody who watched and commented on last week's Ask Cristen video 'Am I OCD?'
Chelsea Gaylord commented, 'Whenever I tell someone I have OCD they get really excited
and ask things like, "What do you do?!" as if I have some sort of fun quirk. Obsessing
over something that you know isn't reasonable to the point where it causes panic and sometimes
physical distress is hard to explain to someone. I really appreciate you taking the time to
make this video and raise some awareness about this disorder!' And Jessy Pinkle said, 'You
cannot be OCD, you can HAVE it. The term "I'm a little OCD" is so false and so frustrating
as people make lightheartedness of the illness and stereotype it to being simply extra tidy
or clean when in reality the severe form is a life debilitating illness which claims lives.
P.S. that was not aimed at you Cristen - you're fab.' And you know what Jessy Pinkle, you're
fab too! And so are you whatever your username is who's watching this video right now. As
always be sure to ask me your questions so I can give you some answers. And I'll believe
you. Unless you're obviously a troll and trying to bait me. You know who you are.