Painful truth for women

Cartoon by Rod Emmerson

It may be a bitter pill for women to swallow, but men handle pain better than the fairer sex, a leading expert says.

When it comes to the science of physical pain, the male has consistently proven the more tolerant of the sexes - though many "incredulous" women may point to the complaining of their men as suggesting the opposite.

"You take 100 people on the street and you ask them 'who's more sensitive to pain - men or women?' and 90 to 95 of them guess men," said visiting Canadian pain expert, Professor Jeffrey Mogil.

"And they all base that idea on the fact that women undergo childbirth and therefore they must be more tolerant to it."

When controlled pain studies are done, not every study finds a difference between the sexes. But every time a difference is found, it finds women are more sensitive to pain, and less tolerant of it.

"It's also clearly true that women are the vast majority of chronic pain patients - approximately 70 per cent," said Professor Mogil, who is speaking in Christchurch at the 2010 Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and Faculty of Pain Medicine.

Sandy Grey, an experienced midwife who has attended more than 1000 births, said she would hate to see the consequences if a man mentioned these findings to his wife or partner during labour. "I'm sure he would move from the room very fast."

Professor Mogil said research was increasingly showing that males and females had completely different brain circuits, genes and chemicals that dealt with pain.

Women do have some advantages over men in the pain stakes, starting with more strategies to cope with pain.

"Men tend to rely on denial and drinking. With women, there's a little bit of denial, less drinking ... (there's) emotional strategies and getting support from friends and family, and various other things."

Secondly, women seem to respond better to opioid painkillers than men do, for reasons not clear to the experts.

On the flipside, there is "sketchier research" to show women may respond less well to over-the-counter analgesics like aspirin.

As research into the different internal pathways for the sexes develops, Professor Mogil says we may eventually see the development of new pain medication developed specifically to work for only one particular gender.