Reason enough for Mirjam Kaijer of the Voices for Women Foundation to start a petition. In it, she argues for gender-specific care and for more research into unexplained health problems in women.
Many women with the same experiences
Kaijer is a former nurse and now works as a medical journalist. She walked around for ten years with unexplained complaints because her doctors couldn’t find anything. She was told it was “part of the menopause.” After a long search on the internet, someone online suggested that Mirjam probably had a tumor in her parathyroid gland. This was subsequently investigated and confirmed by her own doctors. When Kaijer started a hotline, she got a lot of reactions from other women who had the same experiences.
Kaijer thought it was time for politicians to become aware of this, and therefore started a petition. It was handed over by her and other women to Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, Welfare and Sport) last week.
The awareness boards read, among other things: ‘women are twice as likely to have depression’ and ‘an anxiety disorder turned out to be a tumor’.
Wrong diagnoses
This kind of misdiagnosis needs to be addressed, Kaijer says. “We need to be aware that there are still old ideas about women’s health. We are still too easily labeled as stress, burnout, tension, anxiety and depression. When women are hormonally out of balance, the body gets The mind is also often out of balance, so you have to rule out whether it has a physical cause in case of mental problems.”
Parool columnist and journalist Roos Schlikker (47) also recognizes that women often receive unjustified psychological diagnoses. Thirteen years ago she first suffered from an attack of vertigo, and that became more and more common. At its peak, she had as many as 20 seizures a month. “My doctor gave me soothing pills. Later this year it came back and I was told it was a burnout. But it didn’t feel like that to me at all.”
feeling of guilt
The complaints did not go away, which also had consequences for her mental health. “You start to doubt yourself very much. I got a feeling of guilt and fine. That is psychologically very taxing. I am lucky that I am an assertive journalist and that I can read a medical report. There I saw symptoms that I had too. I went to a neurologist and he determined it was a vestibular migraine.”
This form of migraine is also known as balance migraine. This is when someone has attacks of dizziness that occur suddenly without any reason. Other symptoms may include headache, nausea, vomiting, eye spots, and sensitivity to light and sound.
Being aware of the difference between men and women
General practitioner and researcher at Radboudumc Tim Olde Hartman conducted research into the different medical approaches used by men and women.
It is not clear why this approach is different in practice. “I think it’s important that doctors are aware of the differences between male and female bodies and that they are aware of the fact that as a doctor you apparently tend to do things differently with men than with women. .”
The numbers don’t lie: women are 50 percent more likely to be wrongly diagnosed with heart disease. When someone is misdiagnosed, that person has a 70 percent higher risk of dying. This shows why it is important that more knowledge is gained in the field of the female body, says cardiologist Janneke Wittekoek. “Medicine is aimed at the average man. Women are excluded from studies. The reason is stated that the female body is more complicated due to the hormonal cycle.”
Lack of knowledge
But by taking little or no account of the characteristics of the female body, according to Wittekoek, there is a lack of knowledge. She sees this as the main reason that women and men are approached differently in health care.
Wittekoek agrees with the opinion of GP Olde Hartman: doctors should receive additional training to become aware of the gender differences in complaints. But that should not be limited to the study of medicine: “From primary school it should be made clearer in biology books what these biological differences are. For example, that women are more sensitive to stress and can therefore have a heart attack more quickly.”
Petition ‘More research into (unexplained) health problems of women’
The petition of the Voices for Women foundation calls for more research into women’s health problems, cycle and hormone related, looking at both physical and psychological complaints.
In addition, the foundation also wants specialist centers where doctors work who are specifically trained. This increases the chance that women will receive correct diagnoses and be treated better.
Mirjam Kaijer advises women to take control themselves. “It is your body. Think carefully about the consequences if you are prescribed medication. Keep in mind that we still do not know enough about the female body. If the conclusion is burnout or stress, keep thinking carefully that it is also another My advice for care providers is: be careful with words. Say more often that people still do not know enough about the female body, there is still too little knowledge. The male body is the norm, while the female body otherwise becomes ill.”
The petition now has about 44,000 signatures and can still be signed. When it meets the requirements, it will be placed on the agenda of the House of Representatives.