Will the treatment of pain eventually be tailored to a patient’s gender?
When I get a particularly nasty headache, I race for the ibuprofen bottle and down three 200-milligram tablets (a dose long ago approved by my doctor) and get on with whatever I was doing, comforted by the knowledge that I’ve taken action to dull the pain and that I will feel better soon. When my husband has a headache, he delays doing anything — including telling me, for whatever comfort that might bring — and succumbs to the ibuprofen (taking just two tablets) only when the pain is so severe he can’t do much else.
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{ 2 comments }
Kevin’s title suggests gender, the article mixes gender and sex. The article does not stay clear on which issue it is trying to discuss. Is the difference a gender thing (like observing that men don’t ask for directions) or a sex thing (like progesterone levels alter pain response)?
Anonymous 2:52:
Gender is actually a political term, while sex is a clinical term. Using gender in that article would be like investigating differences in pain levels experienced by Republicans and by Democrats. Such a study would seem to be meaningless.
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