So THAT's Why So Many Women Are Always A Bit Sick
“Why are women always sick” has been quite the question this year, hasn’t it? In fact, earlier this year, TikTok user George Santo asked exactly that saying, “Why are girls’ health never at 100%?
If it’s not her period, it’s a headache. If it’s not a headache, it’s cramps. If it’s not cramps, it’s a stomach ache. If it’s not a stomach ache, she’s tired.”
This year especially, we’ve even started to embrace this with clothes that have tongue-in-cheek slogans such as “my tummy hurts but I’m being really brave about it.”
But, why are we always feeling a little bit unwell?
Dr Karan Raj took to his TikTok account to explain exactly that.
@dr.karanr 100%
♬ original sound - Dr Karan Raj
Why are women always sick?
According to the doctor, chronic gynaecological conditions such as endometriosis, PCOS and PMDD are “surprisingly quite common”, affecting hundreds of millions of women worldwide and can be debilitating.
However, he adds, for multiple reasons, these conditions are also often misdiagnosed, under-diagnosed, undiagnosed, untreated or even worse, given the wrong treatment.
The doctor then revealed that a lot of this is due to the fact that women were not required to be in clinical research until 1993.
Screaming.
He adds that if you consider that in combination with centuries of unconscious bias, a lack of funding and research for female-focussed solutions, “you’ve got the perfect storm for a public health crisis.”
How women are still underrepresented in healthcare
This goes beyond gynaecological conditions. Women are more likely to die of heart attacks than men, more likely to have adverse reactions to prescription medications or have their pain dismissed by doctors.
Additionally, erectile dysfunction, which affects 19% of men, is studied in research five times more often than PMS, which affects 90% of women.
Dr Karan Raj stated that, “much of modern medical research is performed exclusively on male bodies and the effects of this research gap can sometimes be deadly,”
“The efficacy, the dosage, the side effects of many drugs were never tested on women so many medications are still routinely over-prescribed to women.”
Finally, he adds, “maybe the question shouldn’t be ‘why are women never at 100%?’ but instead, ‘why are we so bad as a society at figuring out what’s going on with women’s bodies and treating it?’”
Well, precisely.