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Women suffer more pain than men across the whole body, major global study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
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How did they factor in the expected lower reporting from men due to the culture of "suck it up" or "grin and bear it" that seems to be more prevalent among men than women for physical/mental pain?
They can only ask. Pain is inherently very subjective. eg:
Basically the conclusions are bunk and the money spent is wasted.
I would kind of think the opposite: With a big enough & broad enough study that asks lots of extra questions you can use fancy mathematics to allow for confounders and reduce the gap between correlation & causation.
Edit: fuck, that was a long sentence.
Not that I entirely disagree with your point, but if we're going to talk about being put off of reporting, then how about centuries of women being dismissed by medical professionals?
I understand your counterpoint, however has that behavior led to more women not sharing their pain or being louder about their pain to get past the dismissiveness? Do both sexes just bottle it up?
I think both just bottle it up. Men because they are conditioned to be stoic and women because they are conditioned to not be a bother. Most women are in pain a few days every single month but how many women do you know that go around telling everyone about it?
when you stub your toe really badly, or roll your ankle. do you tell everyone about it, or keep it to yourself?
I can't recall ever telling anyone how I stubbed my toe.
Is that because it's not painful or because they think it would be embarrassing though?
NEXT
They didn't, though they do mention pain is complicated to study specifically because diagnosing it necessarily relies on self reporting. This unfortunately makes it virtually impossible to account for that fact. If someone tells you they have some level of pain, there is very little to nothing you can do to know if they are over exaggeratjng, under exaggerating or doing neither.
A more accurate headline would be that women report higher levels of pain across the board, rather than they experience higher levels of pain.
Or standardize the pain scale. A 9 on the scale for me is significantly more pain than a 9 for my wife because I have both a high pain tolerance and threshold. I say 9 because I've never experienced what I'd consider a 10 (pain so intense I lose consciousness).
My vasectomy without anesthesia was a 9.5.
But our response to pain is largely learned.
Bro why did you do it without anesthesia? Mine with local anesthesia was already a whole ordeal I couldn't imagine making it through with out the pain relief.
Because the surgeon didn't believe me when I told him I have the redhead gene and am extremely tolerant to all anesthesia. For reference, it took 8mg of Versed (standard is 1-2) before I even felt it before a down the throat echo of my heart, and my last filling required so much lidocaine that it paralyzed half of my face.
He gave me a bunch of air shots, waited a few minutes, I wasn't numb, did it again for like 20 minutes and said, Well you have to be numb now, can you feel this," then made the incision. I told him I could feel that, but he just went right along.
I was too busy diverting the pain to stop him at that point. But honestly, he was so fast that I likely would have been in pain for longer if I had stopped him and made him give me more anesthesia.
But, I basically did a speed run of the pain, because my recovery was almost completely pain and swelling free.
My doctor didn't let the lidocaine settle on the first side.... I feel you. He shot the lidocaine in and immediately cut. Hurt horribly. He immediately said sorry.... but too late
Ah I did have a similar experience getting a root canal. Whatever they gave me wore off and I was so over the pain that the dead tooth was giving me I told them to just keep going. Granted I chose the pain, but I get the mindset of just getting it done and over with.
That's kinda how it went. I had to stop to take a few breaths after he did the first one to keep from throwing up due to the vasovagal response, and he asked if I wanted to stop for more meds. I was already in the zone so I told him to keep going.
His PA and nurse were visibly bothered by the whole thing. Which is fair because they watched a guy get tortured, at least from their perspective.
But that was the day I confirmed my pain tolerance is higher than most people's. The only reaction I displayed was saying ouch under my breath a few times. It's problematic with stuff like exercise injuries.
It's not really possible because your hormones affect your subjective experience of pain. Things that are not painful at all during ovulation suddenly can feel extremely painful during menstruation.
Same, which can create problems. If I say my pain level is a six, that means I'm in a lot of pain. A doctor who doesn't know me would almost certainly assume otherwise.
Yeahhh no, just no. Women are treated so poorly by the medical system compared to men. I could go to ER with my husband to be seen for the exact same thing He’ll be:
I’ll be:
So you men really have no room to complain about lack of reporting when its literally not even applicable to this situation.
Counterpoint: This could be in part because men seek medical care less than women (source: https://www.icgi.org/do-men-go-to-the-doctor-less-than-women/#The_Data_A_Clear_Picture_of_Disparity), therefore when one does go the medical staff assumes it must be pretty serious, and this would reinforce that the self report study may not be accurate.
That said, it would still be extremely wrong for medical staff to assume that / downplay women who go because they're more likely to go, because then you'll be missing important cases in women, which may also explain why women have worse outcomes in medical care as well.
Overall the situation is shit because under the current system and culture it means men die more often from medical health issues and women die more from unnecessary malpractice and negligence.
Even so, this is a cultural question, not a healthcare one. While women are treated more poorly within the healthcare system, men are exposed, outside the healthcare system, to "man up", "suck it up", "boys don't cry" and a general attitude that admitting to pain is weakness and unmanly.
There may be an abundance of reporting; I would be willing to bet that male pain is better studied than female pain, because that usually seems to be the case (medical science ignoring female physiology to an almost comical degree). But, the point op was making is that the men in the studies are more likely to lie/downplay their pain because of the culture of toxic masculinity. It's one of the ways men are victims of the patriarchy too.