A New Study Explains Why Women Are More Susceptible to Prolonged Pain

If you were to ask me to explain why women tend to experience more prolonged periods of pain, I'd have a lot of theories. Women, after all, carry pregnancies (which don't just affect your body for nine-ish months, FYI)...and we tend to neglect our own needs in order to meet everybody else's, we face wild amounts of medical gaslighting...the list goes on.

But new research reveals that there may be another reason at work. According to the study, which was published in Science Immunology, women do experience slower pain resolution and are more prone to developing chronic pain (no, it's not just in your head). The study also points out that the reason for this is unclear (which, you know, tends to be the case when it comes to matters of women's pain). 

The researchers observed male and female mice to learn more about why male mice tend to have quicker pain resolution, which has been shown in previous research. What they found when comparing these animal findings to data sets was that the reason for this may be molecular. 

The researchers observed that males were more likely to produce a molecule called interleukin-10+ (IL-10). In both sexes, the pain wasn’t resolved when IL-10 was deleted. Pain can certainly have a hormonal link, which may explain why women report greater pain during certain points in their cycles (menstrual migraines, anyone?), and hormonal differences between men and women could be at the root of all this. After traumatic injuries, men reported faster pain resolution and higher production of IL-10…which may be signaled by androgens, which are a group of sex hormones. 

Listen, this research doesn’t give us all the answers, but it does validate the idea that women experience greater pain and have a harder time getting rid of said pain. As always, knowledge is power and information opens doors. So maybe these findings can give the medical community new ways to better understand and address women’s pain.