Article from a few days ago in the Washington Post.
These "being. woman" issues appear to be universal.
It is particularly egregious when, as with thyroid issues, the majority of those with thyroid issues are women. And for those issues which affect exclusively women.
Is it anxiety or something else? What women should know.
By Jamie Friedlander Serrano
November 16, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Centuries ago, when women complained of trouble sleeping, irritability or other problems, their physical ailments were often ignored and filed away as signs of “hysteria,” a condition that doctors believed was caused by the uterus moving around the body.
Fast-forward to today, when hysteria is no longer a go-to label, but women are almost twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, according to a 2016 systematic research review published in the academic journal Brain and Behavior.
The reasons for this are complicated, but one thing is clear: Women may struggle to get diagnoses for health problems — including sleep apnea, thyroid issues and certain heart conditions — early enough if their symptoms are misattributed to anxiety. Sorting out whether a symptom stems from anxiety or something else is essential, experts say, adding that women shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions and advocate for themselves.
Women often have somatic, or physical, symptoms, like a racing heart, muscle tension or diarrhea, said Stacy Doumas, a psychiatrist and chair of the department of psychiatry at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. This can make it difficult to determine whether their symptoms are caused by anxiety, another medical condition, or both, Doumas said.
“It’s tricky for female patients but also for the doctors who are trying to figure it out,” she adds.
Higher rates of anxiety diagnoses in women can make it harder for them to get appropriate medical treatment.
More of the article here - it seems to be open access at least at present:
Gosh some things never change do they!! You'd assume if you're a doctor you'd have clinical tools to identify the causes! Saying that just encountered the exact same reply yesterday in Paris with an allergist: had side effects to antihistamine (ironically racing heart up to 136 when out walking) and new allergist gave me an other anthistamine but wouldn't treat the side effects?? Does make you wonder how they're being trained...
Sadly I'd hoped that a younger doctor would be better trained trained than the older ones.. she sniffed contemptuously at my list of drugs which I have a reaction to... Have had to show similar list to Spanish A&E doctors and can tell you they actually were grateful to see the list.. DEFINITELY about training and empathy...... or lack thereof !
I live in France (for more than 32 years) so have been doing battle with all the specialists ever since! (The ones who bullied me into taking anti-epileptic drugs because I had 2 seizures in 3 years triggered by drugs... went back to Ireland saw Irish neurologist there and UK epileptic society both confirming 2 seizures in 3 years caused by drugs not epilepsy...STILL have the smug letters from specialists annoyed with my 'stubborn' attitude: stopped the drugs and haven't had a seizure in 16 years!!) I let her know that I already knew NOT to go to an A&E at weekends/school holidays- she added I should also avoid end of May/November when the interns change in the hospital... Ironically she refused to treat the side effects I had to the antihistamine my older allergist gave me..(took me 12 days to get back to normal whereas 'French' medical site says 3-5 days..) searched the one she gave me and it has more side effects than the one I took!! Can't say she inspires confidence:all I wanted was to FINALLY get to do a drugs test in a hospital (I'm allergic to antibiotics amongst other things but think it's important to know which ones I can 'safely' take in an emergency)... All I can say is French training is just as bad.... my experience with Spanish specialists is that they are more empathetic (most have studied/work abroad) and there's a 'dialogue' with the patient......She was definitely lacking in empathy! Hubby told me her getting up and standing at the door to let me out (without saying anything) was from the school of 'time is money'!
She sounds charming! Not. Well, all I can say is that in France, like most places, there are good and bad. I had a wonderful French neurologist. Unfortunately she was too wonderful to stay in a sleepy back-water like the town I live in, and she moved to Paris. That happens to every good doctor/dentist I find! So sad.
I might be more inclined to take the article seriously if the doctor quoted wasn't a psychiatrist.
Also the mention of "somatic symptoms" is a bit dodgy, in my opinion. If you look it up in a dictionary :
somatic /sō-măt′ĭk/
adjective
Of, relating to, or affecting the body, especially as distinguished from a body part, the mind, or the environment; corporeal or physical.
Of or relating to the wall of the body cavity, especially as distinguished from the head, limbs, or viscera.
Of or relating to the portion of the vertebrate nervous system that regulates voluntary movement.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
it certainly implies that it relates to physical symptoms but in reality I've read quite a few references to psychosomatic and somatic in recent articles and papers which appear to make the two words appear to be converging in meaning, and somatic is used as if it is related only to mental health problems.
I always think of Aldous Huxley - though in the noun form rather than adjectival.
In Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, a narcotic drug which produces euphoria and hallucination, distributed by the state in order to promote content and social harmony. Also transferred and attributive.
Anorexic, even when you’re not and if I’m hysterical it’s because you’re not listening to me….. given up trying to get help from dr for now, it’s so exhausting I need a break
I think that these days, everything has to have a 'label'.
If you have been given a label, your physician's job is done, no need to investigate further. Oh, you are anxious, here have some pills. Oh, you have high cholesterol, here have some statins. You have ADHD, here is a new treatment. Oh, you have CFS/fibromyalgia - no proper treatment available, we do not really know what's wrong with you but we thought we give you a nice label so you stop bothering us.
I understand that it can get a bit more nuanced to get to the bottom of a problem, as some symptoms can overlap or mask something else - however some detailed blood and nutrient testing should give plenty of clues. And if they had proper scientific training, they could perhaps even learn that some symptoms are interconnected (e.g., low thyroid hormones and anxiety, or low thyroid hormones and high cholesterol levels etc.). The clues are there, you just need to recognise them and take appropriate action. Imagine how many doctor's visits could be saved, if they would treat the actual cause and not the symptoms.....
Makes for interesting reading, and I agree with everyone else: it's disheartening, the continuing assumption that women's health problems tend to be mostly in their heads.
Incidentally, the first severe symptom which made me realise something was very wrong with me, was anxiety -- which I'd never suffered from before -- though accompanied by other symptoms, that were ignored. You can imagine the attitude I got when I refused the anti-depressants pushed onto me!
I've now had first-hand opportunity to compare experiences, because my husband was recently diagnosed with Hashi's. It had taken me some years, and only after I finally saw my sister's doctor abroad, to get my Hashi's diagnosis. Here in Scotland I've had to stick with a private Endo, to avoid the challenge of being judged solely by my TSH results. But my husband saw the local GP once with his complaint of feeling constantly tired, and immediately had his TSH and T4 and antibodies tested. At the follow-up consultation one month later, he was told that although his TSH was only just above the range, if he wanted to start on Thyroxine that would be fine - which he did.
I've been quite gobsmacked at the difference in our experiences with the same condition!
And the addictiveness of any medicine depends on many factors - including the dosing (occasional as needed is unlikely to lead to addiction), the individual (physiologically and mentally), etc.
Higher rates of anxiety diagnoses in women can make it harder for them to get appropriate medical treatment.
Why are there higher rates of anxiety diagnosis in women? Because if a woman tells a doctor they are in pain and the cause is invisible e.g. the average female patient's uterus and ovaries can't be seen unless they've been in a really horrendous accident, then the doctor assumes that women are "somatising" which is doctor-speak for "imagining it" .
Somatization is a tendency to experience and communicate psychological distress as bodily and organic symptoms and to seek medical help for them.[1][2] More commonly expressed, it is the generation of physical symptoms of a psychiatric condition such as anxiety. The term somatization was introduced by Wilhelm Stekel in 1924.[3]
Somatization is a worldwide phenomenon.[4] A somatization spectrum can be identified, with chronic cases being classified as somatization disorder.[5]
As far as I can tell, the concept of "somatization" is the reason why so many women can go to doctors over and over again, get no tests or the bare minimum of testing, and get no real treatment, other than anti-depressants or anti-anxiolytics, which don't work because the patient isn't being treated for the real problem.
The bare minimum of testing, in my experience, is getting a Full Blood Count (FBC) done followed by the offer of SSRIs when the FBC comes back mostly normal and I go back and say that I don't feel any better.
Doctors stopped offering me SSRIs when I started to refuse the prescriptions. I also always refuse statins.
Either somatisation is the largest epidemic ever. Which is sufficient on its own to make it possibly the single most significant health issue.
Or the label is being misapplied at what is sometimes called an industrial scale. When there are real, organic issues which at the very least need to be recognised - even if there is no current treatment.
I believe that anxiety/somatisation is the largest epidemic ever, if only because it is an easy diagnosis to give. It can't be seen, requires no proof, and disbelieving a female patient who denies being anxious or depressed is standard (women don't know their own minds, the poor little dears), doesn't involve the doctor in having to do any testing, and the woman, usually, doesn't die of the unknown problem she has very quickly.
Lazy doctoring - in fact it’s not even doctoring it’s pure prejudice and grotesque assumption in action used to do nothing.
Isn’t it about time they used those psychometric tests to discover who those unfit ones are and weed them out
that Wilhelm Stekel (in 1924) has a lot to answer for
mmm seems to me that it’s sexism that’s the worldwide wide phenomenon not somatization which is nothing more than a male construct without a shred of scientific evidence to back it up
Ffs there’s even a scale of it 😳😡🤬 I bet it closely correlates with actual illness with physical symptoms like thyroid disorder that they love to downplay belittle or simply ignore. I never got a single test but lots and lots if antidepressants dished out - and a fat lot of good they were - blasted to the heavens, I used to say to myself ‘we have lift off!’, as they kicked in…. I could not believe such things could be legally prescribed by a GP…and spaced out for months on end until the body worked out how to lessen its effects to almost zero. That’s not medicine it’s mind altering drug pedaling and stuff they know far too little about yet dish our like smarties. Are they all on the things in the land of the fairies? Do they have they any idea what it’s like to take them? How can they possibly think they help anyone with un or undertreated thyroid disorder? They are nothing more than very strong drugs to shut us up and make us go away to gagaland
I found that the SSRIs I was prescribed made me numb and almost completely emotionless. I never really got back all my emotions after being on SSRIs. (I no longer take them and haven't taken them in years.) I can still be angry, but I almost never laugh these days. I haven't had a good belly laugh or an uncontrollable giggle in years. I certainly never got any kind of "lift off" on SSRIs. And they didn't help my depression and anxiety at all. I only got rid of those when I began to optimise my basic nutrients (mainly iron and ferritin).
How interesting they made me as high as a kite! The diametric opposite of what you experienced. I read they don’t do much if you dont have a lack of serotonin but I bet they really don’t know what they are doing to us . I can’t imagine they are any good for your head in any way whatsoever as their use is quite inappropriate. Maybe they have value in a true psychiatric setting but not as a mask for thyroid disorder that isnt really being properly optimised.
my ferritin is rock bottom it explains why I haven’t t felt so good for a while - it’s a bit grim & I’m not enjoying the iron tablets but do feel marginally better in other ways tho, I’m still full of horrid symptoms . Another annoyance that fast acting iv infusions have been stopped unless you’re about to croak and we have to eat those horrible things for months on end whilst feeling utterly 💩 its medicine gone mad, but it’s the lot of the modern woman maltreated on many fronts by the dinosaur medical profession I’m afraid. They just want us dead and buried and not claiming the OAP
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Is this thyroid or perimenopause or something else? 
Bizarre symptoms come and go - Anxiety due to thyroid pooling or something else?
Thyroid or something else?
Thyroid or something else??
Is it thyroid or something else ?
