Proving the Stereotype that Males Are Better at Withstanding Pain than Females

Female athletes tend to have a higher rate of brain injury than their male counterparts

Peoples beliefs and culture can also have an affect on the amount of pain they are feeling. This can be from a feeling that they do not want to make a fuss. It is important that you create as many opportunities as possible for people to express their pain and create a atmosphere where people know it is acceptable to say they are in pain for example:-

Furthermore, there are distinct differences between women and men in the way that they deal with trauma. Women are more likely to practice self-destructive behaviors or retreat than men who are more likely to practice externally destructive behaviors

Pain not only involves the physical reaction to damaged tissue, but also involves an emotional and cognitive response by the person experiencing the pain (Backer, 1994). A person's prior experience will influence how pain is managed. Pain is a signal that something is not

Each student got a white tub and filled it up with tap water from the sink. Students were paired with two or three other people and formed their groups. Each group got 1 stopwatch, 1 thermometer, and also learned how to each other’s pulse. The temperature of the water used from the sink were adjusted beforehand to about 23°C; room temperature. Water temperature was not re-adjusted to be hotter or colder.

“Pain is much more than a physical sensation caused by a specific stimulus. An individual's perception of pain has important affective (emotional), cognitive, behavioral, and sensory components that are shaped by past experience, culture, and situational factors. The nature of the stimulus for pain can be physical, psychological, or a combination of both.” (Potter, Perry, Stockert, Hall, & Peterson, 2014 p. 141) As stated by Potter et al, the different natures of pain are dealt with differently depending on many factors. Knowing this, treating pain can be very difficult as there is no single or clear cut way of measuring it; “Even though the assessment and treatment of pain is a universally important health care issue,

Again with the same temperatures of one degree, eleven degrees, twenty degrees, thirty degrees, and forty degrees. All the temperatures are in Celsius. The one degree C time is at 24.59 seconds, only two seconds off from the first trial. The eleven degrees C time has 20.39 seconds. At twenty degrees C, the data showed the time was 15.54 seconds. Thirty degrees C had the lowest time of the thirty degrees group, at 8.97. The last temperature was forty degrees C with the lowest time at 7.28 (See appendix two). All the data for trial two supports the hypothesis for this

Pain perception can be less than might be expected from the extent of a physical injury. This was proven by a scientist called Susana Bantick, Oxford University, and colleagues who carried out a study on the influence of attention distracting pain processing (Bantick et al, 2002). During the experiment, brain processing was measured by measuring brain activity using fMRI. Participants rated pain from 1-10 when noxious heat stimulus was applied to their hand in the scanner. She then followed the same process but gave them a task which required cognitive processing; reducing the amount of focused attention on pain. Bantick, therefore, showed attention distraction can reduce the amount of pain perceived by the individual, also pain processing to the brain was reduced. This provides vital evidence that pain perception does not just depend on the injury alone.

Gender do plays a major key role in how patient respond, but we were subjective to believe that the female norm is: emotional, weak, passive, resistant, sensitive and that male are supposed to represent masculinity, strength, tough, and non-emotional. Be that as it may, we would assume in most cases that female response to pain will be higher on the pain rating--meaning it constitute a lower threshold in pain tolerance which it equate for their gender, and vice versa with male. For this reason, in a case study in “Gender, coping and the perception of pain”, by Keogh and Herdenfeldt stated “research consistently indicates that gender differences exist in pain perception, with females typically reporting more negative responses to pain than males” (Keogh, p. 195). Even describing how male and female coping strategies are different “it also seems as if males and females use and benefit from different coping strategies when under stress; females seem to prefer emotion-focused coping, whereas males prefer sensory-focused coping” (Keogh, p. 195). So, I had to include gender difference of pain perception into my project with the respect of cultural influences of pain. Two paradox that is needed to be observe is self serving and mindful, but I was up to the

2. Some of the outside variables that could have affected our outcomes for the experiment are the ambient temperature and how quickly the groups took the hot dogs out of the ice water to measure their temperatures. The ambient temperature was 28 degrees Celsius, the coldest temperatures of the hot dogs ranged from 35 to 37 degrees Celsius, so for the groups that measured their hot dogs’ temperature quicker, they gave their hot dogs a head start in the warming process. For groups that were not as quick with their measurements, their hot dogs starting warming up at a later time, so by the time the experiment was over, their temperatures would have been lower than the groups that measured quickly. We did not control these outside variables because we did not increase or decrease the room temperature by turning on the AC.

Pain is different for everyone, because the brain “…[creates] its own selective picture; a picture largely determined by what is important for the survival and reproduction of the species” (Axel 234). In addition, because “[o]ur perceptions are not direct recordings of the world around us, rather, they are constructed internally according to innate rules” (Axel 234), classifying and treating pain for a large group of individuals is problematic. When attempting to address this issue, the question must be presented: is there a particular type of therapy which hospitals can use to reduce pain perception of patients, thus improving (or upholding) their physical

Pain is an obvious consequence of injuries and surgery, but it is also a common symptom of ill health. A complex experience, with many variables that can influence the patient experience and interpretation. The various factors include age, gender, culture influences, social class, personality and emotional factors such as anxiety, fear and depression which do not necessarily increase the patient’s pain experience, but will affect their reaction to it.

According to John Hopkins Medicine (n.d.), pain is an uncomfortable feeling that tells you something may be wrong. It can be fixed, throbbing, stabbing, aching, pinching, or described in many other ways. Pain is categorized as either acute or chronic. Acute pain is usually severe and brief, and is often a signal that your body has been injured. Chronic pain can vary from mild to severe and is there for long periods of time (John Hopkins Medicine, n.d). This paper will discuss a scenario that entails which person is experiencing the most pain, how two people can have the same procedure experience different levels of pain, factors that contribute to each person’s pain level, and two complementary/alternative methods of pain control.

Society also depicts the masculinity is defined by strength, and that women cant handle as much. A study conducted focused on the aspect of pain tolerance in comparison to men and women conforming to the norms, believing that men are stronger; two studies were performed. The first study tested pain tolerance strictly based on using a hypothetical pain stimulus; scientists wanted to prove that people know and encourage norms on pain tolerance. The second study was done to observe knowledge about pain, and tolerance behavior. It required actual stimulus to be taken place on the participants; they experienced electrical impulses at different intensities. Results showed that high identifying men were able to handle more pain than high identifying females’ some men endured the pain because they felt obligated (Pool, G.).

People who use medications often incorporate those drugs into their life in a variety of ways. For some, it is a life-saving that must be used in order to live. But for others, such as my informant, Amanda, some drugs that are not necessary for life have become equated as a “staple” item. Staple items by definition are “a main or important element of something, especially of a diet, such as bread, milk, etc.,” (dictionary.com). However, in her life, she has come to define the pain relieving drug, Advil, as “staple” for her health. Thus, the goal of my paper is to trace what caused Advil to become tantamount with necessary nourishment. Through the analysis of Amanda’s experience with pain, I will examine how both models of health are enacted as she takes Advil, which have come to change the biomedical intended purpose to a “staple” of life. To further my analysis, I will be referencing Joseph Dumit’s book, Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health, Mol and Law’s paper, “Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: The Example of Hypoglycemia,” and Clara Han’s chapter, “Labor Instability and Community Mental Health: The Work of Pharmaceuticals in Santiago, Chile.”