Issue Date: March 16, 2005
Publisher: Mellanie True Hills, The Health & Productivity Revitalizer

Escape the hype. The Healthy Living News cuts through all the health clutter to bring you reliable news to optimize your life, your health, and your work.

Last issue, we explored how women are more vulnerable to stress than men, but did you know that women also have more pain? I'm just back from a conference where I heard about some fascinating research.

In this issue we'll explore the pain connection further, and in the next issue, we'll wrap up this series by exploring further health and medical disparities between women and men, such as the new aspirin study.

It's Not Just In Your Head—Women Do Have More Pain

If you're a woman, do you ever feel that you have more pain than most? You probably do. Research has confirmed it.

Women don't just have a small percentage more pain, we often have many times more. Your stage of life may influence your amount of pain. Childbirth can sure be painful (that's an understatement), but women suffer from many other types of pain throughout different stages of our lives.

Dr. Kenneth Hargreaves, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Endodontics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA), said that many studies have validated across various areas (surgery, fibromyalgia, migraines, cancer, etc.) that women do indeed have more pain than men, and have it twice as frequently. He spoke to conference attendees about UTHSCSA's investigation into whether pain is sexist.

UTHSCSA researchers started by examining the impact of pain in rats through injecting female rats with estradiol, the main estrogen found in women's bodies. They found a 2–3X increase in pain response as female neurons exhibited an exaggerated response.

Then studies were done of humans who had surgical biopsies and females had a much stronger response to pain than males.

Further research pointed to estrogen in women's bodies increasing the amount of prolactin produced in the pain neurons. Prolactin is a hormone that causes milk production after childbirth. Knowledge of the impact of prolactin in pain response is opening doors for treating pain in women.

Elevated estrogen levels in the body, due to oral contraceptives or hormone replacement therapy (HRT), make us more susceptible to pain by increasing prolactin levels and also put us at greater risk for breast cancer. Prolactin also triggers swelling in joints, increasing pain for those with rheumatoid arthritis.

Most fascinating is the correlation between pain and stress. While acute (short-term) stress decreases our pain as our "fight or flight" response enables us to flee danger, prolactin actually increases when the body is under chronic stress (intense or long-term debilitating stress), thus increasing our pain.

Thus, one answer to the question we posed last time, whether there is a physiological component to why women are more vulnerable to stress, is that women's normal estrogen levels, and the prolactin that estrogen spawns, may be culprits in our greater stress levels. That's important information for us.

There are a number of leaps we could make from these findings to other things in a woman's life, such as the role of estrogen, prolactin, stress, and pain in postpartum depression, but for now, let's simply let medical science validate possible correlations.

So why has it taken so long to discover these things? Researchers avoided studies involving women of child-bearing age due to the impact of monthly hormonal swings and the potential risk to the fetus if a woman got pregnant; however, a few years ago, more government funding was earmarked for women's health research and that stimulated many of the important research findings that have recently surfaced.

What Does This Mean To You?

Are you suffering from pain? If so, it's worth discussing this estrogen connection with your physician or health care team.

Are you also under a great deal of stress? Managing your stress can thus help manage your pain.

At the end of this message you'll find a link to a resource that may help you. It's a program called Your Final Breakthrough, which is designed to help you overcome pain, relieve stress, achieve your chosen weight, and deal with a number of other issues. This series helped me, and could possibly help you, too. If you don't want to wait to the end of this message, just jump straight there now.

Are You Taking Care of Yourself?

Our bodies are so complex, how do you know if you're taking good care of yourself?

I thought I was taking good care of myself, but apparently I wasn't. I was letting my job and my life get in the way.

Then, that fateful day, March 25, 2003, I almost didn't make it. (Read my story.) Not a day goes by now that I don't think about what I would have missed, and truly appreciate all the people that are so important to me.

But you're not going to be like I was. You're too smart for that. You're going to take better care of yourself. Right?

Do you have a plan for your life and your health? Isn't that at least as important as your financial plan? Or as your goals at work? Without your health, you could lose your work and your financial security. I've seen it so many times among stroke and heart disease survivors.

I know you can create a plan. Simply follow the easy steps in A Woman's Guide to Saving Her Own Life and you'll be on your way to good health and longevity. Happiness, too.

So you don't think that you have time to do this? I used to think that, too. I thought I was taking good care of myself (and probably was), but it just wasn't enough. Look what almost happened to me. I didn't even have the traditional heart disease risk factors—I was simply overweight and overstressed.

If you get A Woman's Guide to Saving Her Own Life now, within just a few days (or minutes, if you order the e-book) you'll walk through a simple process that could save your life. Once you've created your plan, you're halfway there to having that healthy life that you desire, and that you deserve to have.

As Dr. Clyde Yancy, American Heart Association 2003 National Physician of the Year, says,
"Mellanie has researched an impressive repository of information and has crystallized the HEART program designed especially for women. Not only should every woman read the part about What Every Woman Should Know About Heart Disease, but every man should read it, too. I highly recommend the book."

In fact, to make it easy for you to take this step, and create a plan to save your life, we're having a "2nd Anniversary of Mellanie's 2nd Chance Sale". Through March 25, 2005, Mellanie's 2nd anniversary, we'll give you FREE US SHIPPING on all orders placed. That's just one week, so do it now, while you're thinking about it. And tell your friends—they're eligible for the sale, too.

This "2nd Anniversary of Mellanie's 2nd Chance Sale" also features quantity discounts in addition to the FREE US Shipping. That makes it a great time to buy copies for yourself, for friends and family, even for your company library. We've recently had orders for multiple copies for entire offices and for company libraries, including training, benefits, wellness, and women's initiative libraries.

Don't forget, to avoid pain, relieve stress, or achieve your chosen weight, check out the Your Final Breakthrough CDs.

Next time, we'll explore Part III of the health disparities between women and men, including the aspirin controversy.

Wishing you all health, happiness, and longevity,

Mellanie

Mellanie True Hills
The Health & Productivity Revitalizer...improving lives & productivity
Speaker and Author of A Woman's Guide to Saving Her Own Life
Read the first two chapters

PS. If you don't get A Woman's Guide to Saving Her Own Life for yourself, do it for your family, friends, and those who count on you. Do it now

PPPS. Feel free to reprint this or any of my articles in your publication, company newsletter, or on your intranet. Please include attribution, copyright, and contact information (http://www.saveherlife.com and http://www.mellaniehills.com) and please send us a copy. Thanks.

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