(Ginny Graves/ Oprah Magazine) — Chronic, debilitating pain—the kind that lasts longer than three months—is the most widespread affliction of our time. It besets approximately 100 million adults in the U.S.—more than diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined—and can upend sufferers’ sleep, mood, appetite, relationships, and ability to function. The epidemic can be blamed, in part, on the fact that as a society we are living longer and gaining too much weight. Yet not everyone is suffering the consequences of these shifts equally—women are disproportionately feeling the pain.
Hormones may play a key part in the gender gap, according to neuroscientist Jeffrey Mogil, PhD, head of McGill University’s Pain Genetics Lab in Montreal. His lab research suggests that testosterone may switch on a pathway that leads males to process pain differently after puberty than females. Though researchers are still studying the underlying mechanisms that cause differences in pain response, other evidence shows that genetic abnormalities linked to estrogen may intensify pain in some women. (…)