Women are NOT Small Men
- Jesi Mifsud
- Jun 30
- 4 min read
I’m about to go on a rant for women’s health. If you don’t want to join me on this journey, please shift to reading something else 😊
Women are NOT small men. Also, menopausal women are not the same as women in their 20s and 30s.
The backstory: I received a TDAP (tetanus/diptheria/pertussis) vaccine on Friday, June 12th. Not because I think I’m going to step on a rusty nail—you know, I’m indoorsy—but because I had the Whooping Cough/Pertussis in 2015 and I don’t want to get THAT again! It was a doozy of 6 months of coughing and thinking I was going to die every night.
Welp, no one tells you that when your hormones walk out the door, vaccines can have a whole different effect on your body than when you were younger. Another thing I can thank menopause for. So, I naively got the vaccine and went about my business. There was a little tenderness at the injection site (left arm). To be expected. I kept moving the arm, doing my Sun Salutations, Down Dogs, and Chaturanagas and all felt good. Then on Wednesday, the arm that had the vaccine started to get inflamed—from the shoulder to the hand. I slapped on some Salon Pas (if you don’t have Salon Pas on hand, we need to talk!) and went about my business. On Thursday, the vaccine arm felt better, but the right shoulder started to act up. It moved down that arm to the hand. By Friday, everything felt better so I thought I had mastered the whole vaccine thing and I was good to go.
Nope. On Sunday night, my left arm blew up so badly from the shoulder to the hand that I had to break down and take 2 ibuprofen—those who know me know that I’m in SERIOUS pain if I take ibuprofen (if you don’t know why ibuprofen is so bad for you, let’s have a cup of chai and chat). It worked like a charm and I was able to sleep and felt a lot better. But, then inflammation reared its ugly head again and on Monday evening. My right arm hurt so badly from the shoulder to the fingertips that I could have cried. I slapped Salon Pas patches on all the painful areas, continued doing some gentle yoga and breathing and today I’m down to one Salon Pas on my inner wrist.
Why the detailed diary entry of my inflammation and pain? Not because I think all of you are so interested in my aches and pains, but because I know I’m not alone. Other women won’t have exactly the same symptoms, the same triggers, the same inflammation, but I can guarantee that their body is acting in ways that it never did when they were younger.
Women are NOT small men. Also, menopausal women are not the same as women in their 20s and 30s.
Did you know that clinical trials did not have to include women until 1993?
“Between 1989 and 1993, inclusion of women in clinical research was NIH policy, but it was not law. In 1993, Congress wrote the NIH inclusion policy into Federal law through a section in the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-43) titled Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research. 8
The law includes various requirements for NIH-funded research, including the following:
NIH ensures that women and minorities are included in all clinical research.
In trials including women and minorities, the trial should be designed and carried out so that it is possible to analyze whether the variables being studied affect women and minorities differently than other participants.
Cost is not an acceptable reason for excluding women and minorities.
NIH initiates programs and support for outreach efforts to recruit and retain women and minorities and their subpopulations as volunteers in clinical studies.”
I’m so glad women needed to be included in trials, but now I think we need to go a step further: include perimenopausal and menopausal women in trials. My almost 59 year old body is NOT the same as my 20s and 30s body. It’s not as resilient. It doesn’t have the same reactions. I know not all women are me, but in chatting about my vaccine experience, so many women told me that their bodies do not tolerate vaccines the same way they used to. One woman even told me that she puts off getting vaccines because of the intense side effects that occur.
When I received the TDAP, my doc said that I need to think about the Shingles vaccine since research is finding that it helps prevent dementia. He was incapacitated for a few days after receiving the Shingles vaccine. What the holy heck?!?! If he was down for a few days, how many days am I going to need? A month?!?! I don’t have a month! Such is the dilemma of a menopausal woman.
Women are NOT small men. Also, menopausal women are not the same as women in their 20s and 30s.
Xx
Jesi
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