Gender medicine
Women’s bodies are different from men’s bodies
Gender medicine
Drugs are tested on men, guidelines are geared towards men. This can be dangerous for women. Because our gender influences symptoms and the success of treatment. Until now, however, this realization has hardly been taken into account in medicine. For many centuries, almost all medical research has focused on men.
This is also because the pharmaceutical industry fears that including women in studies will make the work more complicated. Hormone fluctuations due to the female cycle, contraceptives or menopause would have to be taken into account. Comparisons with older studies would be difficult, as these were only tested on men. The costs would be significantly higher.
When women go to the doctor – with the exception of gynecology – they are treated like men. As a result, symptoms are misinterpreted and therapies are poorly tolerated. For example, men and women differ significantly in terms of their fat, muscle and water content in the body. As a result, drugs are distributed differently in the body and are broken down at different rates. Some active ingredients must first be activated or broken down by a specific enzyme. The fact that men and women are differently equipped with enzymes therefore has a direct effect on how long and how much more active the active ingredient of a drug is found in the blood.
Many studies and statistics now point out that men and women fall ill and recover differently – and often need different medication.
Gender-appropriate medicine and thus the need for gender-specific diagnostics, treatment and, above all, prevention has long been standard practice at Z.O.R. am Roggenmarkt under the direction of Dr. Ulrich Frohberger. This is because we have been practising medicine geared towards the individual patient for many years.
As your orthopaedist in Münster, we do not primarily aim to treat standardized symptoms with medication. We are much more concerned with finding the cause and tackling it at the root. “What really triggers your complaints and symptoms?” This is the central question that needs to be clarified – sometimes with medical detective flair. Only if medication is then necessary do we prescribe it. Carefully and individually adjusted in dosage: highly individual. In such individually oriented sports medicine and orthopaedics, we always take into account that every person is unique.
Our diagnostics are guided by precise findings as well as the individual well-being of our patients. Because here, too, it is clear that there are no standard values that make everyone feel well and efficient. And that is why we are not guided by standard medicine. Our yardstick is you alone, as a man, a woman or a diverse personality.
If you feel strong, efficient, flexible and ready for the challenges of your everyday life, then we have taken the right medical path.
We doctors should be aware of the difference. Because standard medicine with standard solutions for standard patients is increasingly reaching its limits. All the chronic illnesses and diffuse symptoms that many of our patients often suffer from for years before we start looking for the cause are evidence of this.