United Bodies
United Bodies is a podcast about the lived experience of health. Join health and disability writer, producer, and activist Kendall Ciesemier and her guests as they explore how different components of our health – mental, physical, social, and spiritual – interplay with one another and intersect with the whole of our identity. When we understand these forces in our lives, we can meet both ourselves and others with more empathy and maybe even realize our fights for equity, justice, freedom, and accessibility are united.
United Bodies
If Our Pain Were Believed With Samantha Reid
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Kendall Ciesemier
There is a huge gender gap in those that experience pain and how pain is treated. More than 51 million people in the United States – more than 20 percent of adults – live with chronic pain, but 70 percent of pain sufferers are women.
To make matters worse, women and nonbinary people, particularly women and nonbinary people of color, are treated poorly by the medical system. Our pain is ignored. Our needs are unmet. Our diagnoses are late. We are gaslit by doctors and in turn we distrust them. When we are met with skepticism or denial, told that our symptoms are all in our head, we are less likely to go back to a doctor, often only seeking care in crisis and leaving us much sicker and with poorer outcomes.
Our system isn’t set up to care about our pain and therefore our system isn’t set up to care about us. It’s all so bleak.
Our system isn’t set up to care about our pain and therefore our system isn’t set up to care about us. It’s all so bleak.
So today, we’re digging in and talking about it because only in having persistent and open conversation about how big of a pain our pain really is will we realize that we are not alone, it’s not all in our heads, and feel empowered enough to demand change. We weren’t made to suffer.
Joining to discuss is Samantha Reid, digital strategist at a progressive think tank, and sick person who happens to know a thing or two about pain.
Check out this episode’s landing page at MsMagazine.com for a full transcript and more.
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