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The surprising reason medicine tends to work better for men than women.

Yet another reason why we need more equality.

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Even the medical field has bias.

Men.

We have it pretty good. Especially when it comes to our health.

Not only do we get to write the health care legislation, but increasingly, we're getting all the good medical treatment.

We can thank lab animals for this — and the researchers who study them.

For a long time, researchers believed that male animals were better for trials of new medicine.

It was widely assumed that hormone cycles in females would screw up the results.

As a result, currently, over 75% of all lab animals are male.

animal research, studies, gender bias, disease

Lab mouse in a surgically gloved hand.

Image by Rama/Wikimedia Commons/CeCILL.

The problem is, when you test primarily on male animals, you're making medicine that's more likely to be effective for, well, men.

According to a report in New Scientist, researcher Natasha Karp and a team from the U.K.'s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute studied tens of thousands of mice of both sexes. They found that when you switch off genes in male mice, the mice express different traits then when you switch off the same genes in female mice.

If genes express themselves differently depending on the sex of the animal, the researchers found, so do some genetic diseases.

drugs, health, politics, community

Gene therapy: rad as hell.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The team concluded that "drugs optimized for male animals may be less effective in females, or even cause harm." Of the 10 drugs that were pulled from the market between 1997 and 2001, they explained, eight were riskier for women.

Male animal-bias also means drugs that work better for women might not even make it into testing to begin with.

As with the debate over what constitutes an "essential" health care benefit (according to some hi-larious U.S. senators, mammograms shouldn't), when it comes to "who constitutes a full human," it appears men are the considered default setting, while women are an afterthought.

equal rights, equal representation, experiments, medical advancements

A bearded man looking off into the distance all manly.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

It's a pretty sweet gig for us men.

The thing is, women are half of us. We like them.

As fully formed human beings with lives, free will, hopes, dreams, and so on, it'd be nice if medicine worked better on them when they got diseases.

There's been some progress toward making medical experiments more equitable, at least where human subjects are concerned.

Clinical trials (on humans) used to involve pretty much no women. Now most are 30-40% female, though that still means women are underrepresented.

Thanks to efforts of researchers like Karp and her team, we now know we need to extend that progress to the animal kingdom as well.

"Unless there’s a really good reason not to, we should be using both sexes in biomedical research," Karp told New Scientist.

Male animals, she argued, have traits just as particular as female hormone cycles that make them similarly varied from an ideal "norm."

Ultimately, more comprehensive research benefits us all — men and women.

Better studies lead to more effective medicine, which leads to less sickness and sadness all around.

That's the hope anyway.

The animals of both genders who turn out to help us out with this project deserve a hearty "thank you."

If we start with equal treatment, we might finally get some equal treatment.

This article originally appeared on 06.29.17

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Family

A new state just joined the most fascinating birth control experiment in America.

People seeking out oral birth control in Colorado will now be able purchase the medication at a pharmacy without making a doctor's appointment first.

Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.

The law that loosens the restriction was passed in 2016 and went into effect in August — making the Centennial State the third to streamline the process of acquiring birth control pills, along with California and Oregon.

The medication still has to be prescribed — but that can be done by a pharmacist. The process involves a consultation, a questionnaire, and a blood pressure check, according to the Associated Press.

Permitting pharmacies to sell oral birth control over the counter has become a bipartisan cause in recent years — though the parties disagree on how to make it work.

Many drug companies are wary to undergo the FDA's approval process, which can be "lengthy and expensive" and includes the risk of incurring a political backlash, according to a 2015 Guttmacher Institute report.

FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb testifies in front of the House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Subcommittee. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Guttmacher, a reproductive health policy advocacy group, praised California and Oregon's partial approach, while noting that it's "unclear how pharmacists will be able to bill insurance companies for the costs of associated counseling and screening services."

Also in 2015, Senators Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) and Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire) proposed a measure that would reward drug companies that filed applications to sell their oral contraceptives over the counter.  

The plan, while supported by a half-dozen other GOP senators, was opposed by both the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Planned Parenthood on the grounds that such a measure would force potential patients to "pay twice for their birth control," if insurers no longer covered the medication as a result.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

A separate plan, proposed by Democratic Senator Patty Murray in 2015, would have required insurers to cover oral contraceptives purchased over the counter.

Neither Gardner and Ayotte's bill nor Murray's bill passed.

This isn't the first time Colorado has experimented with reforming the birth control delivery process.

In 2009, the state began offering free long-acting intra-uterine devices (IUDs) to residents. Teen pregnancies fell by over 40% over the same period.

For now, those who advocate lowering barriers to access have a new laboratory where they can study the potential benefits.

"People could be coming in to buy shampoo or vitamins, and they can have that conversation with a pharmacist," pharmacist Kelsey Schwander told the Denver Post earlier this year in the run-up to the measure's implementation.

For Coloradans who fear the expense of a doctor's visit, it could be a conversation worth having.  

Family

Jessica McCabe has ADHD. Her message to her mom is tearful and moving.

"This is what I want to say to my mom, who 'drugged' me," Jessica McCabe begins in a voice-over.

McCabe's face pops up on the screen, earnest and direct as she finishes her statement: "Thank you."

The video is the latest in McCabe's series on life with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this heartfelt video, McCabe explains how her mom stepped up to help her get treatment.

ADHD affects about 11% of children in the United States, and while the symptoms are often misunderstood, ADHD can make it hard for kids to focus on things that are uninteresting to them, or it can make them hyperactive and fidgety. School, with its standardized learning environment, can be particularly difficult for kids with ADHD. Her voice cracking, McCabe recalls how much she struggled in school as a result of her ADHD before she got help.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of stigma around how (or even if) parents should treat their kids' ADHD. Some people even believe ADHD isn't real at all. As a result, many parents who choose to put their kids on medication find themselves accused of, as McCabe said, "drugging" their children.

McCabe wants her mom to know how much she appreciates her making sure McCabe got the help she needed.

In the video, McCabe recounts how she and her mom worked together to find a psychiatrist and medication that worked for her. It's because of her mom, McCabe says, that she was able to actually focus in school again and was able to avoid so many of the pitfalls that other people — whose ADHD goes untreated and undiagnosed — have to run into.

What really mattered to McCabe wasn't just the treatment, though.

It was the simple fact that her mom listened when she asked for help.

It hurts when someone doesn't believe you, especially if that person is your parent. But McCabe's mom didn't think she was being lazy or just not trying hard enough. She listened when her kid asked for help. And that mattered.

"You believed me," says McCabe. "And when you did, when you took me to a doctor who could explain to me what was going on in my brain, you took away so much shame."

McCabe didn't need to feel inferior, and she didn't need to blame herself. She had someone who listened to her. She had her mom.

Watch McCabe's full, emotional video below:

Medication helped McCabe, but everyone's brain is different. If you're living with ADHD or think you might be undiagnosed, you should work with a professional to find a treatment plan that works for you.

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She went a whole day not knowing she was having a heart attack. And she's not alone.

True
Cigna 2017

Beatriz Martinez was exercising at the gym one day when she suddenly felt unusually breathless and a little dizzy and got a pain in her stomach.

She stopped and took a minute to breathe, which made her feel a little better. But the pain was still there. Maybe she had pushed herself too hard and pulled a muscle?

"I thought it was the exercises, a muscle ache," says Beatriz. So, she decided to call it quits for the day and drove home.

Beatriz Martinez in her home in Miami. Image via Beatriz Martinez, used with permission.

She made lunch, washed her hair, and went about the whole day like everything was normal — even though the dull ache in her stomach never really went away. That evening, she and her husband even went to a party. But at that point, the pain had gotten worse, and by the time they went home, she was vomiting and the pain had spread to her chest.

They went straight to the emergency room.

At the hospital, they ran some tests — and Beatriz was told she was having a heart attack.

One of the most important arteries in her heart, the left anterior descending (LAD), was completely blocked. "That I'm alive, it's like a miracle," she says.

She had a stent put in and she was in recovery at the hospital for six days before she was able to go home again.

Beatriz's story is not uncommon.

Heart disease is actually one of the most common causes of death for women in the United States. But in some cases, it can be prevented — which is why preventive health care is so important.

Image via iStock.

"What creates problems for people are the things that they don't know and therefore can't change," says Dr. Nicholas Gettas, a family doctor who is now a medical officer at Cigna.

With health issues, such as heart disease, it is the cumulative effect over time of risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, that can cause a problem — like a heart attack. That’s why it is important to be informed about your four health numbers: blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and body mass index (BMI).

Image via iStock.

Even if you eat well and exercise, it's still worth getting checked. "You might see a person who is thin, who exercises, whose diet appears to be great ... [but] there is some genetic issue that means that their cholesterol is still high," says Gettas. In fact, he adds, he had a patient with a similar experience.

"The earlier you identify, the earlier you can moderate and modify the issue and the more likely you are to get a better long-term result," he says.

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if everyone got their recommended preventive care, we could probably save 100,000 lives in America every year.

Beatriz's experience taught her a lot about the importance of keeping an eye on her health.

Even at the hospital, when everyone was rushing around to treat her, Beatriz says she couldn't help but think they were overreacting because she still didn't think it was that serious.

"I never thought that I had anything wrong with my heart," Beatriz says. She had always thought of herself as healthy: She was active, she exercised regularly, and she wasn't overweight.

Image via iStock.

She was also unaware of something very important: The symptoms of a heart attack are often very different for women than they are for men.

Most of the heart attack indicators we hear about are actually what happens when men have a heart attack — such as the left arm going numb or the obvious severe chest pain. In women, heart attack symptoms can be more subtle, as Beatriz experienced:

  • The pain isn't always in the chest. It can be in the neck, jaw, upper back, or stomach region.
  • Sometimes it just feels like a bad case of indigestion.
  • Other times it just causes shortness of breath — which is sometimes mistaken as a panic attack — or dizziness.
  • It can also cause nausea and vomiting.

This means women are more likely to ignore their pain or downplay the symptoms, causing a dangerous delay in treatment that can be deadly. In fact, according to the Mayo Clinic, women often show up in emergency roomsafter heart damage has already occurred.

Image via iStock.

But there are some warning signs — Beatriz just didn’t know to look for them.

"Before I had the heart attack, I felt breathless a lot and had pain in my jaw, but I didn’t pay attention to that because I didn’t know that was symptoms of your heart," she says. There was also a history of heart disease in her family, she adds, "but I never thought I was going to have it in my life. I never thought it would happen to me."

Beatriz wants other women to know the risk factors for heart disease before a health incident makes them all too aware of it.

She has gotten involved with the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease and has become a WomenHeart Champion. She wants to spread awareness about heart health and the symptoms of heart disease to women across the United States. And she wants to encourage them to take control of their health before they ever get sick.

Image via Beatriz Martinez, used with permission.

It has been almost five years since Beatriz had her heart attack, and she says she's come a long way in terms of taking control of her health.

She started on medication and a special diet immediately after the heart attack. And now, not only does she go to the gym, but she also does aerobics three times a week, and she works with a personal trainer three hours a week. With the help of her doctor, she also keeps close tabs on her four health numbers. And now that Martinez has taken control, her health has never been better.

"I went to my cardiologist [recently] and he said that now, my cholesterol numbers are excellent, my blood sugar is excellent — my numbers are excellent," she says.

Beatriz says that the one thing her heart attack taught her was that she can’t become complacent about her health. "You can die if you don't take care of yourself," she says.

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