According to a new study, your sex may determine how well you respond to pain relief medication.
By Korin Miller and Rachel Boswell
There’s a laundry list of things that men and women experience, and can do, differently.
There are physiological variances for a start, which, in the running sphere, lead to performance differences. Men, generally speaking, are faster runners than women thanks to larger aerobic capacity and greater strength (although world records are converging, and the longer the race distance, the shorter the gender pace gap). What’s more, recent research has even found that men and women trying to lose weight should eat different breakfast foods.
And now, a new study has determined pain to be another point of difference between the sexes.
The study, which was recently published in PNAS Nexus, suggests that women, compared to men, are more susceptible to chronic pain and tend to be less responsive to relief-giving opioid medications. Here’s what a pharmacologist has to say about the study – and what you can learn if you’re a pain-prone runner.
What did the study find?
For the study, researchers analysed data from two clinical trials that involved 98 people. Participants included those who were healthy, as well as those who were diagnosed with chronic lower back pain – which is one of the most common complaints among runners.
First, the participants went through a meditation training programme. Then, they practiced meditating while taking either a placebo or high dose of naloxone. A drug that is often used to reverse opioid overdoses, naloxone also stops opioids produced in the body from working.
The participants were then given a painful (but harmless) heat stimulus to the back of the leg, while researchers measured how much pain relief the participants had from meditation when the opioid system was blocked or still intact.
The researchers found a few different things. One is that the meditation-based pain relief was less effective in men when the opioid system was blocked, which suggested that they tend to rely on the body’s opioid production to reduce pain.
On the other hand, naloxone actually increased the benefits of meditation-based pain relief in women, which suggested that women rely on non-opioid mechanisms to reduce pain.
Do men experience pain differently to women?
It does seem that way. While it’s important to point out that this is just one study, previous research has also found that men and women experience pain – and even pain signals – differently.
‘Pain is subjective, so it is very hard to quantify reliably,’ says Jamie Alan, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University. ‘Also, you wonder about societal expectations with regards to pain. There are studies that note that women report pain more frequently compared to men. Do this mean that they have more pain, or more intense pain – or is it just more acceptable for a women to report pain?’
Are pain medications less effective for women?
It’s tricky to lump an entire sex together, but research has suggested that some pain medications may be less effective for women. For example, one 2021 study found that ibuprofen tends to be more effective in men than women, while another study discovered that prednisone may cause more uncomfortable side effects in women.
According to Alan, though, there isn’t enough data to conclude that some pain medications are less effective for women. ‘There are physiological differences between men and women and, notably, there are differences in drug metabolism between men and women,’ she says. ‘It makes sense that men and women may respond to pain medication differently.’
What can women do to reduce pain?
Researchers generally agree that more research into pain management techniques among women is needed. Plus, as it stands, no recommendations say that women should have certain pain relief medications over men, and vice versa.
‘It is best to assess the patient holistically rather than pick a treatment plan for pain based on sex only,’ says Alan. ‘It’s important that we do not make such broad generalisations based on one study.’
That said, if you’re taking a medication for pain and aren’t getting relief, it’s important to speak up – your doctor should be able to recommend an alternative.
