Disease ecologies: menopause, pain, work.
- This week I am flying solo - a daunting prospect after years of working in teams!
- Exciting too, and a good chance to put into practice how I mean to roll.
- (This includes physical/mental health regimes - so I tried my 5 minutes of mindfulness after a century of absence, AND went for a little run too. Which made me feel fit-ish and pleased. But in all honesty, it is now Friday and I've lapsed)
- I promised to think of examples of disease ecologies, so here is one:
- for the next couple of months I will be working on understanding the relationship between pain-menopause-work. Or at least this is the initial idea.
- Menopause: it is a biological event but also a life event. A lot of things change in the body at the time of menopause, from varying hormone levels and their related metabolic and physical consequences (these can go so far as to affect mental health) to the first signs of ageing; but it may also be a time of big life changes. With menopause usually occurring at midlife, if may coincide with changes in the family structure (children leaving home, increased responsibilities for ageing parents, there may be some grandchildren around OR NOT), and consequently with work life, which may be affected by family commitments or other responsibilities.
- How the physical and the social aspects of menopause interface with each other may increase chances of disease: a change in body structure will make it more vulnerable to the effects of stress (be it work or home related), maybe particularly so if the social situation isn't flexible enough to accommodate the physical transitions.
- I'm particularly interested in how this relates to persistent pain, defined as a pain that is not related to a healing injury but that persists in a particular body location. An example of a persistent pain condition is fibromyalgia, which is most common in women at midlife.
- Stress might be what contributes in persistent pain emerging in certain women at menopause and not others.
- In particular, I am interested in work as a source of stress or as a protective factor - because not all jobs are stressful, and they may even be the source of recognition, status, joy... all things that counter the negative effects of stress.
- So this is a hypothesis for a disease ecology - where pain, menopause and social life (in particular, work) are factors that by their combination may be involved in the emergence of persistent pain.
- Until next week!
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