A rant on women’s health
I love the 90s for lots of reasons. One unusual reason is that the 90s is when scientists finally started to realize that women should be included in medical research! Wild, right – to think that a woman’s body that is literally a portal of creation might work a little bit differently than that of a man.
So novel!
Today I interviewed a researcher who is doing some interesting stuff in the land of Parkinson’s disease. A few things stood out:
It’s commonly thought that men get Parkinson’s more than women. But the hot-off-the-press research is saying it’s not THAT much more. And (surprise, surprise!) women are more frequently misdiagnosed as (drum roll please) ANXIETY before finally getting the correct diagnosis.
Women are a lot less likely than men to undergo a procedure called deep brain stimulation that can provide symptomatic relief. Why? Well, let me tell ya. Her research is showing that women aren’t offered the treatment (hello, provider bias!). Plus they have different questions about the treatment than their male counterparts. Women have a lot of concerns that relate to their families and who will take on the burdens they carry if they undergo this procedure. You know, the invisible, relentless, and disproportionate cognitive burden women carry. That stuff.
And finally, women are more likely than men to not have a caregiver at home. Men, it seems, don’t even think about it – their questions center around the science and the procedure and how it will physically impact them and only them. Essentially, their decision-making centers on their own experience and the rest will be taken care of by their wives. Women are more likely to be single and live alone, and therefore require a lot more in terms of support from friends and family who do not live in their home.
I share this all today, because as a woman who has a lot of female friends who, like me, are also single, I gotta tell ya – these are things we need to think about, now. We ought to start forming our caregiver groups. And come to think of it, we probably better include our married friends, too. Because we all know who is doing the caregiving in relationships.
So yeah, I love the 90s. I love how it’s the decade medicine decided we women were worthy of study. I love that now in the year of 2026, we’re still classifying a woman's presentation of a disease as “atypical” because they don’t fit the man’s presentation. And that’s simply because we’re not actually studying women. Let’s just hope that more women researchers design studies that take into the account the mental load and emotional labor we’re already holding – otherwise we’re probably not going to participate in research. Because when would we have time?
<end rant>
