New Study Sheds Light On Why Women Experience More Chronic Pain Than Men

It’s a well-known fact in the medical community that when it comes to chronic pain, women are more likely to be affected by it than men. According to Harvard Medical School, roughly 70% of patients impacted by chronic pain are women, while 80% of studies done on chronic pain involve only male participants or male rats. As someone with chronic pain, I myself have been seated in a class for fibromyalgia sufferers and clocked just how many of them were women: every last one. So when a new study was published Friday that may have finally found a reason why this happens, it definitely caught my attention.

In this study, researchers at Michigan State University learned something new: men’s immune systems may have a better system for shutting down pain because of their higher testosterone levels. Researchers asked 245 participants who had experienced traumatic injuries (they were mostly in car accidents) to rate their pain levels over 84 days. While the men and women in the group reported roughly the same levels of pain on the day the injury happened, as a whole, the men’s cohort started feeling better much faster than the women’s.

Then, researchers compared those pain rankings to the participants’ bloodwork, which showed the men had notably higher levels of interleukin-10. IL-10 is an anti-inflammatory immune signaling protein that essentially tells the brain to switch off the pain signals it’s sending out. And as one of the lead researchers told NBC, testosterone increases the production of IL-10 in the body. These new findings may also explain why some previous research has determined that women feel pain more intensely than men.

So, because men have higher levels of testosterone naturally, their immune systems may just be more efficient at shutting off pain signals after injury. You and your husband may have been in the same car crash, but you’re not being dramatic because your neck still hurts daily and his stopped weeks ago.

“What we show is, it’s a real biological mechanism from the immune cells. It’s not in the mind,” said Geoffroy Laumet, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of physiology at Michigan State University, in an interview with NBC News. The researchers assert that their findings would apply not only to people who’ve experienced an injury, but to people with painful chronic conditions too — think migraines, fibromyalgia, and more.

While this study was relatively small, it marks an important step forward in many ways. The study actually involved women, who have historically been left out of research trials because it was believed their hormonal fluctuations added too many variables to the findings. This study also viewed pain as worth studying, understanding, and alleviating, when for so long, women’s pain has been dismissed, downplayed, and often disbelieved entirely. When we include women in medical research, we can begin to understand the disparities they’ve been reporting for decades now.

And while more research is needed, Laumet suggested that perhaps their findings mean testosterone patches could one day be used to alleviate long-lasting pain for women.

There is a pressing need for better treatment of chronic pain in the U.S., where OTC painkillers, opioids, and even SSRIs are the best options we have — none of them without significant risks and side effects when used long-term. One in 4 women in the U.S. live in chronic pain and are forced to cover it up to keep their jobs, show up for their families, and simply get sh*t done. So, the idea that — perhaps in our lifetime — a simple topical patch could at least take the edge off? That is a very welcome scientific advancement indeed.