SOMETIMES the best tests in medicine can鈥檛 explain what is going on in our bodies. And when that happens, it is more often women who are turned away with a shrug and told the problem is 鈥渁ll in your head鈥�.
That is troublesome enough if there is an identifiable physical problem: study after study has shown that women鈥檚 medical concerns are taken less seriously than men鈥檚. Women face longer a diagnosis, are more likely to have to return to a GP before being referred for investigations, and are less likely to have their condition classified as 鈥渦rgent鈥� in hospital or to be kinds of pain relief.
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But what about when the problem is all in your head, but very real just the same? A century ago, women who complained of pain or other symptoms that had no traceable cause were dismissed as hysterical. We have come a long way since then, but there is still quite a distance to go.
Thankfully, in recent years doctors have started making sense of a group of mystery conditions where people experience symptoms from gastrointestinal problems to paralysis, but medical tests suggest nothing is physically wrong (see 鈥�Mystery illnesses reveal the power of our minds to influence health鈥�). Known as functional disorders, they can be life-changing, mimicking the symptoms of epilepsy or multiple sclerosis, or leaving a person unable to use their limbs. Two-thirds of those affected are women.
As doctors investigate the underlying causes, they are homing in on the true nature of mind over matter: the disconnect between physical reality and our perceptions of our bodies and the world around us. This mismatch is something that we can all experience, and that may underlie these mysterious conditions 鈥� but also provide the key to treating them.
