Imagine your lower back hurts so much that you book a doctor's appointment. During the visit, the physician asks a standard medical question: "How would you rate your pain on a scale of o to 10?" Whether you answer that it's a persistent, irksome 3 or a debilitating 9, you assume your doctor will treat you according to your need.
But for too many women, that's when a new kind of torment begins. Research suggests that health care providers are more likely to underestimate pain in women than in men, says Tina Doshi, M.D., an assistant professor of pain medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Doctors may be less likely to perceive a given score as the true reflection of a woman's experience, so an 8 out of 10 from a woman may prompt a different treatment than an 8 out of 10 from a man." This can occur regardless of physician gender and despite studies that show that women are beset by more painful conditions - we have more headaches, lower-back and neck pain and painful autoimmune diseases. Research also shows that we report higher pain scores than men for similar ailments, which suggests that we feel our discomfort more intensely.
Although women are more likely to suffer from chronic pain, studies indicate that stereotypes play into how women are treated in the exam room, and that can affect our care. In one study, when medical students and clinicians saw videos of patients in chronic pain, they estimated women's pain, on average, as lower than men's - and were more likely to recommend psychological treatment to women and analgesics to men.
People of color fare even worse. Black ER patients were 40% less likely than whites to receive any analgesics for acute pain, and Hispanic ER patients were 25% less likely, a 2019 review of 14 studies found. Those groups were also less likely to receive more powerful opiates.
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Can Anything Really Firm Your Face? - Countless complexion brands tout skin-tightening solutions like firming skincare products, at-home devices and professional treatments
Countless complexion brands tout skin-tightening solutions like firming skincare products, at-home devices and professional treatments. Here, our experts get real about whether these techniques can actually help skin bounce back once it starts to go lax. Sagging skin is caused primarily by the loss of collagen and elastin (proteins that give skin structural support and elasticity) with age, says Mamina Turegano, M.D., a dermatologist at Sanova Dermatology in New Orleans. And there's no shortage of potions proclaiming to counteract it with firming and lifting effects. Most commonly in serum and moisturizer form, these products contain ingredients like peptides, retinol, vitamin C, growth factors and niacinamide that purport to stimulate collagen production or ones that plump skin, such as hyaluronic acid.
The Stress-Busting Hack That's Right Under Your Nose- Breathwork is more than the wellness trend du jour- it's a science-backed route to relief from multiple modern ailments.
“OK, OK, just take a breath.” If that’s what a friend advises after you panic-share about a major-anxiety-inducing situation — your teen taking his maiden solo voyage behind the wheel, work instability, another high-stakes world crisis dinging your phone every few minutes — it’s probably because they hate seeing you so on edge. But also, your friend is offering an effective means of slowing your spin. “The way you breathe affects anxiety, and anxiety affects how you breathe,” says James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. “It’s a two-way street, and while anxiety isn’t a conscious choice, our breathing is.”
Do Men Really Not See The Mess? - The answer might surprise you. Journalist and author Gemma Hartley pulls back the curtain to reveal the invisible forces that drive this all-too-common cause of marital strife.
There was a time, earlier in my marriage, when every morning as I walked into the kitchen I braced myself for the rage and resentment that would well up in me.Cupboards left open. Dirty dishes in the sink. Coffee cups strewn around the house. And usually a pair of slippers or shoes, with inside-out socks, on the floor somewhere nearby. Even when I had left the house spotless the night before, I’d wake to a scene of disarray — the mess my husband had left behind on his way out the door for work.I didn’t know which scenario seemed worse, my husband’s consciously expecting me to clean up these messes or his truly not noticing them at all. I found myself silently tallying these small resentments, furious and flummoxed in turn that he seemed oblivious to things that needed to be tidied up around the house. It seemed as if he was always waiting for me to tell him what had to be done, as if he was incapable of noticing the mess himself even when he was creating it.
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At-Home Devices
In this burgeoning category of DIY skin tools, technologies like microcurrent (low-level electrical current), radiofrequency (lowfrequency electromagnetic waves), lasers (pulsating light) and LED light aim to stimulate muscles or collagen production to firm and tighten.
