The Scientific Research & Scriptural Truth behind Why Women Experience Pain Differently from Men
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By Peyton Garland, Crosswalk.com
Women have historically been excluded from medical studies and research. In fact, it wasn’t a federal law that medical trials, studies, and results include data specific to women until 1993, when the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-43), named the Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research, was passed.
In the 1970s, women with conceiving abilities were banned from medical trials and studies to avoid harming a potential fetus, even if the woman was on birth control or their husband had had a vasectomy. While we can tip our hats to those in the medical field wishing to protect the unborn, banning young women from any medical studies prevented women’s medicine from advancing.
Thus, how certain diseases and ailments specifically impact the female body remains a slight mystery, leaving women without the all-encompassing medical treatment that most men receive.
In fact, a new study suggests that women’s immune responses are different from men’s, which may explain why women have longer-lasting pain than men following surgery, physical trauma, or illness. According to research, men typically have higher levels of interleukin-10, a molecule that helps shut down pain signals, but women’s immune systems might keep these pain signals active longer.
Historically, people have believed women simply have a lower pain tolerance than men, or that they dramatize what they are feeling. (Research how medical professionals diagnosed and treated women in Regency Europe for a deeper understanding.) But these new findings concerning immune cell responses could change the narrative.
Thankfully, many medical experts say that scientific discoveries such as this should serve as a wake-up call to the healthcare community to equally prioritize research and the understanding of female anatomy. This means believing a woman when she says she’s in pain and discovering ways to properly target any ailments or chronic conditions she might have.
This naturally leads believers to an important question: When God reveals new scientific explanations for human struggles, how are we called as followers of Christ to reflect His compassion, listen with humility, and honor the God-given dignity of those in pain? Furthermore, is women’s greater pain by design or a sign of a broken world?
Why Every Discovery Must Be Surrendered to Biblical Authority
My husband has a saying that has been life-changing in my faith walk: Jesus is the truth. Everything else is a lie.
At first, this might seem a bit pessimistic, even cynical or paranoid. That’s what I thought at first. But this isn’t meant to suggest that everyone and everything is a big, evil, manipulative lie. Not everyone is out to gaslight you.
However, anything that isn’t fully surrendered to the authority of the Bible and the nature of God is exposed to the world’s sin contagion. Opinions, the need to be right, the need to be wanted, the desire for personal satisfaction, etc., will all impact the narrative we receive from others. Thus, everything apart from God’s truth will always be manipulated, often unintentionally, by man’s personal needs or desires.
The medical field certainly isn’t immune to this reality. In a capitalist country, where people make money off of other people’s physical and even mental ailments, we would be foolish to believe that greed, the desire for power, and a hunger for career status don’t impact how everyday people are cared for, whether women, children, or the elderly.
This gives Christians no other response to new medical discoveries than one of deep compassion. Until we have walked in someone else’s shoes, we truly cannot understand their perspective.
Of course, we can’t ever understand how much of the truth anyone is or isn’t revealing. However, man’s sinful nature and the lies that riddle this world aren’t what should dictate our willingness to practice empathy and offer service where we can. Christ is our ultimate authority, and since He is the only source of truth, we have no excuse but to submit to his honest authority and treat others with mutual respect and love.
This doesn’t mean we allow others to abuse or manipulate our kindness, but when God allows man a new insight into this world and how it works—and especially how it impacts people—we are to obey the call of 1 Corinthians 13, which says that love trusts and responds in selflessness.
Suffering Was Not Part of God’s Good Creation
Brokenness was never part of God’s original design for this world. The first two chapters of Genesis reveal, over and over, that what God made was good. A perfect Maker can only make perfect things, so we would be quite silly to believe that before sin entered the world and tainted our nature, things would be faulty or broken. As an eternal God, His creatures were to be eternal, to fellowship with Him forever. If this weren’t so, God wouldn’t have sent His Son to restore mankind so we could return to the original plan of living with God in heaven forever, completely whole.
We can try to fit our cultural tension concerning the battle of the sexes into God’s original design, dissecting the curses unique to man and woman after they ruined His perfect design, to determine if women are simply meant to receive a greater burden. My sin nature has certainly chased this ignorant, prideful rabbit hole, especially as a woman who has birthed a child and had the occasional huffy, puffy thought that God must have served us a greater portion of pain.
But when I consider Christ’s earthly sacrifice as a human, there is no room to debate which among the sexes has ever endured more pain and soul-filled heartache. There is no room because there is no longer a purpose to pointing fingers and debating which of us endures the most. In light of the cross, it’s none of us. So while studies and social trends could point to one sex enduring more or surrendering more or being most silenced, I’ve learned that my greatest concern should be nothing short of the truth.
And that truth is Jesus. Everything else is a lie, at worst, and man’s attempts to control the world’s narrative, at best.
Our Peace Is Found Beyond This World
Politics, marketable goods, and even those in your social circle often want to sway you, whether it’s to vote for them, buy their product, or simply like them. It’s not always an evil scheme, but humans love to persuade others to focus their positive attention on themselves. But when we look at what’s eternal, when we remember the spiritual endgame for us all, we can let go of the hostile fury that controls our emotions when we feel society has slighted, overlooked, or misunderstood us.
We can accept the unavoidable heartache and even deception of a fallen world, and we can pursue Christ’s command to love others well, allowing our pursuit of His eternal love to keep us anchored. That alone will be our peace, our prize, our purpose, and our true healing, no matter what earthly science confirms or denies.
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/fizkes
Peyton Garland is an author, editor, and boy mama who lives in the beautiful foothills of East Tennessee. Subscribe to her blog Uncured+Okay for more encouragement.
