When it Comes to Your Health, Sex Matters!

For those of you who missed 60 Minutes on Sunday, I highly recommend you go to the CBS news website and view it.  The report to view was about the difference between men and women when it comes to how our bodies synthesize medication.

A "new" study shows that when it comes to Ambien  (40 million prescriptions are given out every year!), it appears that women who were given the same prescription strength as men, showed cognitive impairment the next day, especially when driving.  Women need one-half the dosage of men.  What is particularly interesting is that the FDA knew about this over 20 years ago, and yet, made no acknowledgement of this to prescribing physicians.  The neuroscientist who was part of the interview on 60 Minutes believes that the FDA simply didn't think it was that important.

He also believes that there needs to be a complete re-think among researchers when it comes to all drug strengths for men and women.   According to another researcher interviewed on the program, women's and men's stem cells behave differently, too.  Male rats who were given female rats' stem cells to see if they would have an affect on plaque build up in the arteries, responded positively to the female stem cells, but their arteries showed no change with male stem cells.  Even she was astonished by the results.

The health care profession definitely shows a bias towards men, when it comes to both research and medical care.  Since women's symptoms are far different from men's when experiencing a heart attack, research dating back for 20 years shows that women are much more likely to be misdiagnosed with some other condition, while having an active myocardial infarct.

The FDA representative chose to downplay this difference between males and females when it comes to these differences...it appears the FDA has chosen to close its eyes to the concerns of the researchers.

What shocks me is the complacence by the American public concerning this situation.  Look at the hue and cry about GM not being forthcoming about the ignition problem in many of their cars over the last decade that caused a few deaths and numerous accidents.  Yet, we have a government oversight agency ignoring their own data and not a peep from any of the media or consumer's groups.  I remind you that the average American (under Medicare age) takes 13 prescription drugs, a day.  I have to wonder just how over-medicated we truly are. What a shame.

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