Posts Tagged ‘heart attack’
A simple answer? Doctors ignoring that Period pain is as bad as a heart attack
Posted on: June 12, 2016
- In: Essays | health/medicine | social articles | women
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Period pain is officially as bad as a heart attack
Why have doctors ignored it? The answer is simple
Men wait an average of 49 minutes before being treated for abdominal pain.
For women, the wait is 65 minutes for the same symptoms. It’s thought that this is because women are seen as exaggerating pain and being ‘dramatic’ due to sexist stereotypes
John Guillebaud, professor of reproductive health at University College London, revealed this week that research shows period pain can be as “bad as having a heart attack”. He said: “Men don’t get it and it hasn’t been given the centrality it should have. I do believe it’s something that should be taken care of, like anything else in medicine.”
Dr Imogen Shaw, a GP specialising in women’s healthcare, welcomed his comments, saying: “I wouldn’t say [period pain] has been hugely investigated,” and when asked if the issue would be taken more seriously if men experienced it, said: “I suspect there would be, being very cynical.”
It is extraordinary how little the medical profession engages with menstruation.
Although recent years have seen period taboos broken through social media campaigns, this has yet to permeate medical discourse – and periods are seldom given serious medical consideration in research.
Scant research has been conducted on specific pain prevention or pain relief and devices such as tampons, moon-cups and sanitary towels remain rudimentary.
It’s not only women’s period pain which is taken less seriously, either – ignoring women’s pain is a concerning practise across medicine. Recent research has shown that women’s pain is taken much less seriously by doctors generally.
(Supposedly that women are more exposed and trained to endure pains?)
Men wait an average of 49 minutes before being treated for abdominal pain. For women, the wait is 65 minutes for the same symptoms. It’s thought that this is because women are seen as exaggerating pain and being ‘dramatic’ due to sexist stereotypes, while men are listened to and believed when they express the same pain and symptoms.
Indeed, the word ‘hysterical’, itself stems from hystericus, meaning ‘of the womb’, indelibly linking how society has linked wombs with overreaction, incredibility and instability.
The great historians of the world have been mostly silent on the issue of menstruation. Period pain has long been restricted to whispered exchanges between mothers, daughters, sisters and female friends, rather than worthy of polite conversation, never mind the annals of history or intellectual debate.
However, menstrual blood occasionally seeps through history’s pages, and its rare appearances reveal something telling.
For Aristotle, period blood was the elixir of life which mingled with sperm to produce babies, making it at once an unnatural horror and the natural proof of woman’s innate inferiority, leading him to conclude, “we should look upon the female state as being as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature.”
The Old Testament offers a similar mixture of sanctimonious horror and boyish fascination at the gore of menstruation in a flamboyant Leviticus passage which advocates that menstruating women be excluded from society for 7 days, until “on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles or young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the Lord for the issue of her uncleanness.”
(Stupid Old Testament)
In the eighteenth century, fads for astronomy brought a new element to medical discussions on menstruation. As one of King George II’s physicians, Richard Mead, pronounced: “Everyone knows how great a share the moon has in forwarding those evacuations of the female sex.”
Since these men’s pronouncements, basic research has established the link between monthly blood and the shedding of the lining of the womb.
But beyond this, precious little engagement with menstruation has entered medical discourse.
Despite affecting women and trans men around the world for days every month, the pain involved in menstruation is seldom questioned nor are serious attempts to alleviate it mentioned.
This is largely because menstruation is presented as ‘Woman’s Troubles’, and framed as a natural pain innate to women; almost a holy, mystical suffering like childbirth.
It’s as if to ask for relief is to be less of a woman, or to give up the pretence of women being silent, stoic receptacles of reproduction.
To demand medical discourse, aid or intervention in the form of pain relief would be giving up the deeply gendered game of keeping quiet, pursing your lips and simply hugging the hot water bottle tighter against your abdomen.
While it’s a relief that Aristotle and the Old Testament’s pronouncements on periods are no longer considered the height of knowledge on the issue, the medical profession’s engagement with menstruation still leaves a lot to be desired.
Menstruation may no longer be the taboo that it once was, but it’s still not considered a respectable enough issue to warrant serious scientific consideration.
Women will suffer because of this, every month, until it is.
Are you not having an Anxiety Attack? Maybe you are not paying attention while driving?
Posted on: April 11, 2015
Are you not having an Anxiety Attack? Maybe you are not pay attention while driving?
I’m having an anxiety attack in Beirut.
I know I’m having an anxiety attack because I thought I was having a heart attack but when I googled my symptoms it said I was having anxiety instead.
It occurred to me that Beirut is probably the best place on earth to have an anxiety attack because there are so many reasons to be anxious.
Elsewhere, you might say, “Oh I’m freaking out,” and people will look at you with pity in their eyes and laughter in their heads.
“There, there,” they’ll say. “The dog next door isn’t plotting to attack you in your sleep.”
Here, the attitude about anxiety is more along the lines of: well, it’s about time you had some anxiety, ya 3ayne (my eye), I was worried you were dead there for a second.
Just in case you’re in the mood to have an anxiety attack, I’ve compiled a list of questions for us all to think about.
1. Do you see any trees outside?
2. Do you think that one tree is enough to offset all the pollution from even one car?
3. Is that car about to hit you?
4. Do you hear that cat meowing? Do you realize it’s stuck in the motor of a car?
5. Do you see the men building that high-rise over there?
6. Is there a giant piece of plaster about to fall on your head?
7. Can you even hear what I’m saying over all the noise of the construction jackhammering?
8. Is your building going to collapse today?
9. How much money do you make?
10. How much does a chai latte at Urbanista cost?
11. How often do you drink a chai latte at Urbanista?
12. Can you spare a measly $3 to help out some poor refugee mother who needs to buy her child some food and powdered milk?
13. Really? That’s interesting, because it looks like you just walked out of Urbanista, where you spent $10 on one coffee.
14. Have you gained weight?
15. How many calories do you think are in this salad?
16. Did you read the story about the cancer-causing pesticides they’ve been using?
17. Have you paid off your generator mafia lately?
18. Do you need a nose job?
19. Are you sure? What is the aesthetic job alteration most on your mind?
20. If you have a nose job already, do you think that it will make your face look lopsided as you get older?
21. Do you think the silicone in your boobs is going to explode?
22. Do you think everyone is talking about you?
23. Have you met any nice guys lately?
24. What if you’re gay after all?
25. What if you’re straight after all?
26. What if you die alone anyway?
27. Do you remember taking a math test at university that you didn’t study for, and as you were taking it realized that you were going to fail miserably? What if that’s what the afterlife is like?
28. What if the afterlife is a place where they replay every embarrassing moment from your life over and over again into eternity?
29. Are you racist?
30. Is Israel going to attack us this week? Are Daesh about to infiltrate Ersal today?
31. How is that ISIS caliphate coming along?
Paradoxically, the threat of war has this beautifully simplifying effect on life: All your other concerns – the pollution, the fact that you’re not giving money to refugees – get swept aside when you start wondering if the Israelis are going to bomb Beirut, or if that whole ISIS caliphate thing is ever going to really take off.
It’s like being a junkie.
It must be why politicians enjoy keeping people in an eternal state of fear and anxiety in the first place.
Just in case you’re in the mood to have an anxiety attack, I’ve compiled a list of questions for us all to think about.
“Is that car about to hit you?”
Adonis Diaries 