Whether it’s because of distinct dissimilarities in physiology, lifestyle habits, or the fact that women tend to care for children more than men, the two sexes really do differ when it comes to joint and muscle problems.
Chronic Pain in Women
A recent American Podiatric Medical Association survey found that 87 percent of women suffer foot pain due to painful shoes, while a 2009 study from the Back Pain Research Group at the University of Sydney showed that working women are three times more likely than their male counterparts to incur neck pain. What’s more, osteoarthritis of the knee is twice as common in women as in men, and nine out of 10 bunions crop up on female feet.
It’s sometimes difficult, however, to pinpoint from a physiological standpoint exactly why women are more prone to certain aches and pains. In fact, researchers are conflicted about whether women are simply more sensitive to pain than men—or less. In the case of most multitasking female professionals and mothers, though, it’s a moot point.
But fortunately, there are options. From t’ai chi and tension release to dumbbell exercises and acupuncture, you can find relief without resorting to cortisone injections or a handful of pharmaceuticals. Here’s a rundown of the latest research and most effective integrative therapies for everyday aches and pains.
Knee Pain
Causes of Knee Pain
Pregnancy, motherhood, anatomy, shoes: For some women, these factors all add up to rickety knees. And knee pain during your 30s and 40s can lead to arthritis in your 50s, 60s, and 70s. “When pregnant, we often gain weight quickly, many of us don’t exercise”, and our weight extending in front of us stresses the knees, says Sabrina Strickland, MD, an assistant professor at New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery.
Pain under the kneecap, called patellofemoral pain syndrome, is more than twice as common in women than in men. If you’ve ever been a baby-lifting, toddler-toting mother, you’ve performed actions your body’s not used to—like getting up off the floor over and over again—at a time when you may have lost fitness.
Whether you’re pregnant or not, shoes with heels, even wide, stable ones, can place up to 26 percent more pressure on the knee. “It’s these years of pressure that end up causing osteoarthritis,” says Casey Kerrigan, MD, former chairwoman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Virginia.
Plus, because the Q-angle—the angle the femur (thigh bone) forms with the tibia (lower leg bone)—is greater in women than men, female athletes are up to eight times more likely to tear their ACL, a crucial ligament in the knee. A greater Q-angle can also cause the quadriceps to pull on the kneecap, moving it out of its usual track. As a result, women generally experience more wear on the lower-body joints.
Supplements for Knee Pain
Strickland recommends glucosamine and chondroitin supplements to help restore connective tissue. A 2018 study analysis showed an overall decrease in pain when taken separately, but not when taken together together. The results were very inconsistent though. However, both supplements are very safe—and may help some people, says Strickland, who recommends taking 1,500 mg of glucosamine and 1,200 mg of chondroitin sulfate three times daily. “It costs a dollar a day, so I often tell my patients to try it for three months to see if they notice a difference,” she says.
The same goes for avocado-soybean unsaponifiables, available in soft gels or pills, which were shown in a 2015 to lessen pain and stiffness in people with knee osteoarthritis.
There’s also promising research that doing t’ai chi twice a week reduces knee pain, as does strengthening your hips with conditioning exercises. Losing weight is equally important. Carrying around an extra 5 pounds increases the load on the knees tenfold, so even lightening up a little can make a big difference.
Foot Pain
Common Foot Issues
- It isn’t too difficult to fathom that 3-inch stiletto heels can wreak havoc on a female foot. Walking on your tippy toes causes twisting in the knee and can lead to metatarsalgia—tenderness under the ball of the foot.
- Morton’s neuroma, a painful condition caused by tissue thickening around a nerve between the third and fourth toes, is 10 times more common in women than in men, in part because of the pressure high heels place on the forefoot.
- Plantar fasciitis, irritation and inflammation of the heel and arch, is also more than twice as likely to occur in women.
- Thanks to the narrow toe boxes of most ladies’ shoes, more than half of women in the US have bunions—abnormal bony growths at the base of the big toe.
Most footwear is bad for you, says Kerrigan. “The classic design of shoes—with some heel and a stiff arch—comes from the old days of cobblers,” she says. “There’s no good reason for it. It’s as if shoe structures assume that a woman’s body is made wrong.”
Remedies for Foot Pain
Kerrigan was so frustrated by her footwear options that she left academia to develop her own shoe. “Without better footwear, the research is worthless,” she says. She’s now the chairwoman of JKM Technologies and OESH shoes, and developed her women’s walking shoe—with physiologically compliant cantilevers that are designed to move and flex with a woman’s body movements rather than against them.
Save those party shoes for special occasions, and if you have to wear heels, keep them low. beneath the ball of the foot to relieve pressure and help thwart potential foot problems.
Got bunions? Choose a shoe with plenty of room around your toes and no overlying stitching that might constrict natural movement and swelling.
If heel pain such as plantar fasciitis is your problem, try physical therapy. Research shows that noninvasive therapies utilizing heat, massage, strengthening, and stretching treat joint and muscle problems more effectively than cortisone injections.
And, as is true of most joint problems, losing a little weight when you’re heavy makes those hundreds of millions of steps you take over a lifetime that much easier on your body.
Hip Pain
Hip Pain in Women
A 2007 study of 2,954 adults published in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation found that 23.5 percent of women experience greater trochanteric pain syndrome—tenderness or pain near the top of the thigh where the femur (thigh bone) meets the hip—compared to only 8.5 percent of men.
According to lead author Neil Segal, MD, director of the Clinical Osteoarthritis Research Program at the University of Iowa, the reason could be anatomical, muscular, or hormonal—women’s wider pelvises, weaker outer hip muscles, or hormones affect the impact on bones and joints. Exercise is also a culprit: “The hips generally start hurting from overuse activities like running, not from day-to-day activities,” Strickland says.
Other than hip pain during and after childbirth, women don’t necessarily have more hip problems than men. Weaker hips can cause pain that creeps down the leg. A February review from the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT) found that women with patellofemoral pain have weaker hip muscles, while IT band syndrome may be exacerbated when hip muscles are underdeveloped or the pelvis is out of balance.
Exercises for Hip Pain
What keeps your pelvic area from flexing and rotating too much? Your gluteal muscles. A weak butt can mean unstable hips, and unstable hips can cause leg injuries and knee pain. Here are some great exercises according to Christopher Powers, PhD, author of the JOSPT review and codirector of the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research Lab at the University of Southern California.
- Abductions – lie on your side, legs straight, and left the top leg
- Alternating arm-leg raises – kneel on your hands and knees; lift and straighten one arm while lifting and straightening the opposite leg; hold for 5 seconds before switching sides
- Squats
- Lunges
- IT band stretch – stand upright; cross your left foot in front of your right; raise your right arm and gradually lean to the left ( you should feel a slight pull at the top of your right hip)
Remember to take it slow, cautions Strickland.
Back Pain in Women
Types of Back Pain
Back pain affects as much as 85 percent of the population, according to some studies. In fact, a third of all visits to complementary medicine practitioners are to treat back or neck pain, a far higher percentage than for any other condition.
A study published in the Clinical Journal of Pain confirmed that women are more affected by low back pain than men, and their prognosis tends to be worse. Once again, pregnancy may be the culprit. “There’s nothing worse for core strength than being or having been pregnant,” says Strickland, adding that a weak core leaves women’s backs more vulnerable. Not only that, ligaments stay lax when you have to lift car seats and other kids, which can lead to aches, pulls, and other painful problems.
The Fix
A whole host of treatments exist for back pain, but today, we focus on two promising ways to address the issue.
- Acupuncture – Of 638 patients with chronic low back pain at Seattle’s Group Health Center for Health Studies, 60 percent who received acupuncture twice a week for three weeks, then once a week for four weeks, reported significant improvement—compared with only 39 percent of the control group, which took traditional pain meds and received physical therapy. A year later, up to 65 percent of the acupuncture group still reported improvements.
- The Alexander Technique – A 2008 study published in the British Medical Journal found that six one-on-one lessons in the Alexander Technique—which teaches better posture, ease of mobility, and tension release in everyday movements—combined with exercise treated back pain more effectively than massage, reducing days with pain by up to 85 percent. “Most people don’t pay attention to how they clench their jaws, stiffen their legs, and slouch throughout the day,” says Los Angeles–based Alexander Technique teacher Sharon Jakubecy. “A lot of people feel both lighter and more grounded after a few lessons in the technique.”
Neck and Shoulder Pain
Reasons for Neck and Shoulder Pain
Julia Hush, PhD, a musculoskeletal physiotherapy expert and researcher for the Back Pain Research Group at the University of Sydney, discovered that female office workers incur neck pain three times more often than their male colleagues.
More than 50 percent of female office workers have frequent pain, according to one Denmark study. Of those, two-thirds suffer from pain in the large muscle that spans the neck, shoulder, and back. Possible Causes
- Sitting at a computer for long periods of time. When seated at a desk, most people hunch over, then hyperextend their necks in order to look forward. If you notice shoulder pain on the side where you use a computer mouse, you may have what’s sometimes called “mouse shoulder,” caused by having to reach too far forward or to the side of a wide keyboard to click.
- Carrying a heavy handbag – “When your purse is really heavy—more than 10 percent of your body weight—you tend to shrug to keep it from sliding off,” says Strickland. “That leads to a lot of stiffness.”
Not surprisingly, research has also shown that tense muscles have a reduced ability to rest and relax.
Relieving Neck and Shoulder Pain
The good news is that there are many ways to remedy annoying neck and shoulder cricks. Hush found that those who performed general exercise at least three times a week—and whose necks were more flexible—were less likely to experience neck and shoulder pain.
“I recommend doing neck movements like gently looking up, down, and side to side, and touching your ear to your shoulder to improve flexibility,” she says.
And targeted neck-strengthening exercises are even better. According to the Danish researchers, five dumbbell exercises—reverse fly, one-arm row, shoulder abduction, shoulder elevation, and upright row, done three times a week—reduced women’s neck pain levels by half.
At the office, reduce “mouse shoulder” by placing your entire forearm on your desk, chair, or even in your lap, using the mouse from the top of your thigh. If nothing else, says Strickland, when you’re about town, carry in your purse only what you need, and divide your shopping loads into two bags—one for each shoulder.
References:
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/glucosamine-and-chondroitin-for-osteoarthritis-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=Glucosamine%20and%20chondroitin%20are%20constituents,in%20its%20resistance%20to%20compression.
