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Obstacles to female medical care and to women in society 

A graphic language of generic shaping and sensory (or enteroceptive) descriptions

This page proposes to make deeper connections between fields generally kept separate:

• the physical ‘discomforts’ considered negligeable in medicine, and the difficulty, under normal living conditions, of maintaining adequate basic female physiology — tissue integrity, vegetative life functions (as breathing, water distribution, temperature), more primary than immuno-neuro-endocrine systems and the ‘higher’ brain
• the differences between male and female communication about pain and the body’s state
• the obstacles and limitations faced by women in society, usually attributed to the patriarchal organisation or focused on more pain throughout life — these are surface manifestations
• the general ecology and definitions of the ‘healthy human’, and their arising from a topologic ecology of survival and advancement in civilised/agricultural societies
• the fundamental biological operational difference between male and female physiologies, and their limits, independent from mental faculties, which are not sex-dimorphic, although they may be culturally different with gender.

If an abstract approach makes little sense to you, keep an eye out for the Youtube channel Cognitive Animated Geometry, with 2 playlists, ‘Dimensional Geometry‘ and ‘Variable Geometry‘, dedicated respectively to structural and functional views, familiar to men and women. Short videos based on conversations and geometric animations will give a sense of how practical this geometric tool can be in daily life.

Obstacles to female medical care

Obstacles affect some men too, for different reasons. Health professionals of both sexes demonstrate bias, mis-attributing female physical difficulties according to cultural views of women rather than medical investigation, systematically invoking ‘normal female issues’ (often not treated). The following video (8mn) extracted from a Netflix series, presents an typical example.

She eventually receives a ‘disease’ diagnosis , too late to avoid impaired developments (including loosing her career and passion), whereas the ‘early symptoms’ (pain) could have been addressed before it came to this. Pain is a signal that function is pushed to limits and is causing counter-productive effects, manifest as signs of physiological strain, habitually ignored. Pain is already a ‘boundary behaviour’ of the body-brain-mind — of reaching past and breaching the limits of optimal function. The syndromes studied in my PhD research stand at a lower order of gravity, but operate similarly at limits. If chronic and not treated, they eventually develop to a re-cognisable disease, as in this video. The list of possible diseases investigated in this story is a very common list for women consulting doctors, who cannot find a ‘physical’ illness, and so think ‘then it must be psychological’. This judgement is based on frameworks that reduce biology to ‘physical or mental’, and it fails women’s lives.

There is a gap in medical understanding of these syndromes which are ‘not well understood‘ and ‘affect women more than men‘, according to medical literature. Their subtle signals of basic biolological deregulation produce the not so subtle Flaring/Crashing characterisitc (the resulting critical pattern of activity). This  fits the Wind-up/Wind-down modulation role under pressure or challenge of the Autonomic Nervous System. However autonomic medicine is a recent new field, still unfamiliar to most doctors, and with measurement problems. See the Physio PS resources below. The resulting Flaring/Crashing characteristic itself is common, but is not necessarily the end result. To see this requires a different modelling than psychological and medical diagnostic algorithms.

Why is it so difficult to get doctors to listen and believe what a patient describes?

Why is a woman not treated until it gets three times worse and she ‘gets’ a re-cognisable disease? The following video from a conference on Aura Migraine is enlightening. The psychological and medical diagnostic algorithms are designed from the viewpoint of men, who ruled medicine, and this produces a deep disparity in the medical treatment of female conditions.

Symptoms localisation in females

The female symptoms of common diseases may not localise in the same way as in men, and can be missed by doctors. For example, an academic paper points to this: Gender Specific Variations in the Description, Intensity and Location of Angina Pectoris: A Cross-Sectional Study (2009):

Female graphic langage and sensory descriptions

The most damaging for women is not the syndrome itself, but the attitude in medicine and psychology practitioners, which induces self-doubt:  being told “it’s all in your head, there is no physical disease“, and receiving labels akin to ‘hypochondriac‘ or ‘difficult patient’. Many spend years wondering if they are crazy, even though they have certainty about what they are trying to communicate, unsuccessfully. (See below in ‘Resources’ some stories published by affected female doctors.) It is the way women communicate and think of the health of their body and life — their overall ‘state’ — that is not understood adequately. Doctors trained only in understanding disease and survival (not having diseases acute or chronic), and think in terms of symptoms of disease, and they  translate what women say and gesture into that framework.

Yet what women might be describing reflects an earlier stage than disease, a stage of physiological strain, with signs and signals, including fatigue or pain (e.g. swelling without inflammation detectable objectively). They discribe this with a differnt language, as noted in this academic paper: Pain Language and Gender Differences When Describing a Past Pain Event (2009), which has apparently not been followed up by more research:

In the case of the flaring syndromes, rather than symptoms of disease and structural damage, the signs and signals of lesser medical gravity (emergency) signify functional strain. The findings ofthese two reports tend to support the idea that (1) medicine ignores localisation and intensity if they do not fit recognised diseases descriptions, (2) women have a more spatial-kinesic (‘graphic and sensory’) way of sensing their state and describing what they feel than men explanations and medical nosological categories, and that (3) the very sensations of bodily health (sensory or/and enteroceptive) are the source of a mental modelling in a changing 3D space (localisation, and intensity or activity), rather than a  conventionalised way of re-presenting the body’s state in terms of mental emotional interpretations and timed events.  Adding to this the syndromes charaterised by critical states of Flaring (e.g. swelling, inflammation, reactions) or energy Crashing (fatigue, asthenia, and ‘brain fog’ in the mind), the idea now makes sense of using an ‘Animated Geometry’ to figure the health and life situation that reaches and breaches boundary, passes the limits of the optimum physiological range of operation.

Not ‘All in her head’ or ‘imagined’, but a figured ‘imaging’

Using this approach enables an abstract imaging of the difference between the more direct female view of their state and predicament, and the culturally male-derived undersanding of female syndromes and behaviours, which sometimes even results in insinuations about trying to get un-necessary and un-deserved supports from disability services, even published in seriously reviewed medico-social academic papers. The assumptions about female psychology and presuppositions about female health, and behaviour in society, run far deeper than a moral issue of social labelling and psychological attitudes.

The following poster (Bouchon, 2013) summarises two views of the state of women affected by the flaring syndromes that do not warrant a ‘physical’ disease label in many doctors opinion, and two totally opposite strategies for treatment. This is the case also in the broad spectrum of cognitive difference when it is approached as an abnormal disorder rather than a set of specific needs different from normal needs of the majority of people. The difference lies in how the situation ‘presents’ to a patient’s biological awareness , versus how her or his descriptions are translated into the languages of frameworks of representation based on nosologies and ‘symptoms’ of disease/disorder, in which the ‘presenting situation’ does not make sense. A geometric imaging shows the difference in a simple way.

The opposite strategies lead to full recovery versus pushing the basic, vegetative deregulation into a physical or mental/psychiatric disease. For example, an agitation or muscular tension mis-labeled as psychological ‘anxiety’ and treated with psychiatric drugs on the basis of the very generalised ‘Dope-Dampen’ strategy, can produce bipolar disorder, and disastrous consequences for physical health. This crucial disparity in understanding and actions also has profound implications for the entire position of women in society on the basis of apparent behaviour, and now for the general drift of human health, not only into lifestyle and ageing diseases, but also into societally impairing syndromes that destroy a person’s life in society and productive contribution.

This view is consistent with some global reactions of women to the developed and re-developed western way of  life. For example: Latin American Decolonial Feminisms: Theoretical Perspectives and Challenges  (2021). They make connections between colonial expansion and the deleterious effects on land rather than the body. The issue actually is not limited to feminism or male survival, but affects human behaviour and states.

Maslow or not Maslow?

Another view aims to simply remain Safe and Sound, to maintain BioLife properly, and express the best human potential one was born with, even if there are physical or metabolic birth defects. This altered and inverted pyramid relates more to children before adrenarche, a proportion of women, and some men:

Wind-up & Wind-down, versus Un-Wind

The issue here concerns the entire Homo Sapiens species, but is more visible through female health. The more important consequence of changing the way of looking at female flaring syndromes and behaviour (and that of children) [without recognised disease]  through the lens of Wind-Up & Wind-Down (or Dope & Dampen) is to bring up that these ancient strategies are not beneficial for all humans or all all stages of life. Apprehending this and the related pictorial symbols (such as the medical caduceus) though geometric shapes unveils a new, hidden option: that of UN-winding the spiraling behaviour, and in all humans. This option is also available to work towards reducing the climate instability rather than keep contributing to it with all the human excesses and keep pushing in that direction. 

 (better animation soon to come in the Youtube channel)

Knowing how to understand the properties of ‘un-winding’ from  boundary to UnWind in practice can be learned from veterinary wildlife science and wildlife care, or from certain spontaneous bodily behaviours which amount to an un-patterned ‘Wildlife Care for Humans‘ – members of the primate species Homo Sapiens -, as opposed to medical cure or traditional techniques to compensate (e.g. herbs, teas, meditation…). This approach would benefit the world of humans, reconnecting it to nature, without impairing its capacities for advancement (e.g. mental faculties, technologies), and would most certainly change the nature of existence and life-in-society for children, some men and women. The core origin of women’s position in society relates to the apparently chaotic behaviour of an agitated, de-patterned, de-compensated physiology (e.g. metabolic, immumo-endocrine and autonomic-nervous deregulation) that pushing the (autonomic) survival drive too intensely, for too long, induces in some female individuals. They are, so to speak, the canari in the mine that shows where we are headed collectively. This is most apparent in the increasing numbers of middle class people who increasingly fall to burnout, depression, anxiety, out of no longer having sufficient income to pay for rent, energy and fuel, and food, whose basic needs unmet weaken them past the capacity to raise yet more survival resilience.

Obstacles and consequences

The combination of physical and societal obstacles leads to vicious circles, thus contributing to the spiraling out of hand of the situation for those affected.

Health ecology under pressure

A health ecology permanently under pressure develops into periodic Flaring & Crashing, endlessly cycling in vicious circles until the body is no more a ‘resource’ to exploit to produce high energy. The easiest way to do this in the civilised world is to ‘raise’  the EnErgo of the Autonomic Nervous System. In males, this can work stably for a lifetime. Not so in children, women, and some sensitive individuals, in whom it induces a state of strain (chronic effort rather than psycho-social ‘stress’ managed with cortisol), to both activate productive  functions high, and correct the correlated counter-productive effects in all aspects of life. This turns into an endless cycling, a ‘spiral’ of Wind-Up and Wind-Down, without ever UN-winding to get proper rest, especially nervous rest, and so that the body-brain can operate locally without constant ‘central’ control and regulation. This way of functioning fits well the Autonomic Nervous System.

The only solutions available in practice involve ‘self’-management, which requires to activate what caused the problem in the first place. Doctors advise to change ‘lifestyle choices’, but these are rarely ‘chosen’ and more a necessity to ‘Keep Up’ with societal environments. Autonomic physicians and alternative health practitioners recommend ‘Therapeutic Lifestyle Change’, but this is often not feasible in practice if there has been no social support or even inclusion sufficient to afford the said changes.

The female biology does not work primarily according to survival as it does in the male biology, but according to viability. It does not thrive under relentless permanent pressure: many women tend to talk of the ‘survival mode’ as a means to endure difficult conditions, and a demand for high effort, rather than a sense of being powerful or creative; they often say, “I am sick and tired of just surviving”, or fall into the tired sickness that characterises at times most sub-clinical flaring syndromes. Even in procreation, which is a highly activated state for part of the pregnancy (growth of a fetus and delivery) that takes resources from the mother, the early beginning of the process cannot occur without a foundation of basic viability in the womb. Women cannot withstand permanent survival activation as well as men, suffer more basic/systemic  deregulation, more pain, and their ‘personal’ behaviour is subject to more critical states, which have baffled men for as long as history. Apprehending and representing the body endowed with BioLife as merely a material system of biological objects in communication, which grows and activates survival, has led to ignoring this, to female health devaluation justified culturally with ‘the hormones’, to not treating syndromes before disease sets in, and to countless other consequences for the world of humans derived from ungrounded beliefs that all must grow, activate, and expand, leading everyone and everything into the spiraling critical states that used to affect, physically, mostly only females and children. But this is spreading beyond ‘management’, so a new understanding is urgent.

To understand health and human behaviour, most analogies to machines and computers, similarities to animal/plant extremes (crazed, ‘animalistic’, invasive, viral…), or making meaning through metaphors are remote from actual human-scale daily life for the largest majority of people. Taking a new look with the Rubber Sheet Geometry of small distorsion (not ‘tearing the fabric’ or wrecking operational integrity) and using in the Animated Geometry to gauge and model the approach of critical states and limits, and boundary behaviour in any space or context, provide a practical operational understanding, more grounded in the ongoing daily life of humans, animals, plants, ecosystems, which are not or should not be under permanent relentless pressure – the one thing that apparently everyone agrees on. Further research in this program aims to validate or invalidate this observation.

Mind map: Incomplete health ecology models produce inescapable, unnecessary, built-in obstacles

The following mindmap is a summary of the counter-productive consequences of not having an adequate understanding and modeling of female flaring syndromes of low gravity (but very high impact on quality of life and productivity). This contributes to all the global human problems that we keep trying to solve, yet keep re-creating in more complex ways, thus contributing back in a loop to the ‘worsening & improving’ human situation. 

This mindmap is a high resolution image. Zoom in on your browser, or download then zoom in; or you can view details in the Mindmap Details section of Resources below.

Questions about the arising risks

‘Wind Storm’ is a Spiraling like a tornado: The ‘viral storm’ of covid, the ‘accelerator and brake on at the same time’ in fibromyalgia (see below, Dr J. Colombo contributions in Resourses section), an ‘adrenaline storm’, and the whirlwind-like ‘Climacteric’ phenomena can all be modeled with a spiral in 3D-motion, with properties of boundary behaviour. The ‘spin’ or spiraling out of hand of an agitated child’s behaviour, or of the whole of society in exponential acceleration, and the destabilising climate, all work in this same way. Conventional models are meant for the ‘2D screen of the mind”, and see only two alternatives: ‘going further Up’ or ‘coming back Down’. (See the page Open Letter To Thinkers on this site.) Theproblem isthat these both increase the spiral and cause vicious circles just as much as virtuous ones (a symmetry that has puzzled hundreds of philosophers over the centuries, similar to ‘squaring the circle’: few philosophers know geometry or topology or simply centers of projection or coordinate systems). The 3D-moving geometrically-imaged modelling provides a new option: the Un-wind option, which can work in all cases, and solves many problems of clashes of perspective.  It is fundamentally different from a 2D ‘wind-down’, return or de-growth, which do not include a notion of di-rection but not of topologic ‘orienting’.

Joe Colombo – The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) as two systems measurable independently and simultaneously. Coming soon: IMAGE and ANIMATION  (horizontal ‘balance’ vs. the vertical ‘V’ of ‘accelerator and brake at the same time’, and the ‘V’ as a geometric projection of a 3D spiral in motion). The following video summarises the hitherto hidden role of the ANS in signals and signs of physiologic instability much before any disease symptoms appear. The de-regulated operations of the ANS (not working in balance as in normal health) fit well the modeling of a spiral.

Robert Sapolsky on the primate male survival drive, and the neurological ‘neuron energy crisis’ in diseases (coming VIDEO extract). Here we are talking about ‘EnErgo’: inducing or putting in (‘en’, as in envelop) the state of ‘being in work’ (‘-ergo’) — the state of effort or survival effort governed by the autonomics, with higher metabolic activity, including in the brain’s neurons, as well as compensatory correcting or healing mechanisms, which also require energy and can lead to disease.

David Sinclair on mitochondrial weakening and their improvement as a way of preventing ageing deterioration. The substance Nicotinamide MonoNucleotide (NMN) can have more profound effects on a non-normal body-brain with a highly reactive autonomic nervous system.

Joe Colombo on deploying both branches of the ANS survival mechanism — sympathetic fight-flight (Wind-up) & compensatory recovery-healing or rest-digest (Wind-down), and the correlated strain on mitochondria. The oriented ‘activation’ that keeps lowering the threshold of reaction to a challenge leads to an active weakening, the spiral-storm akin to ‘accelerator and brakes on at the same time’, and mitochondrial failing.  More specific data about a person’s ANS can take care of it so that many conditions do not occur before one’s time.

Bouchon made an experimental and theoretical PhD study of  sub-clinical flaring syndromes, which are generally characterised by the spiraling and autonomic symptoms. They occur in highly reactive physiologies – driven people-, and the onslaught of societal over-stimulation on those sensitive to small distorsions makes the syndromes more likely.

The current financial industry extreme developments and re-developments enabled by globalised connected technology and economy, and their destabilising influence on society, can be viewed as an unconscious acting out and an extreme collective expression of survival ‘drive’, addiction to ‘High’ and to endless increase (e.g. greed), of the same essence as the destabilisation in the climate, whose extremes are inducing human survival activation and explanations. Circularity. Homo Sapiens has an ‘advanced’ mind capable of solving complex problems, and technology to help, yes, and to destroy and cratemore problems. It also has a non-developmental mind capable of gauging the deleterious counter-productive effects of the current materialistic and mentalistic ‘Human Advancement’ drive: a destructive effect on the biosphere and bioLife itself, including human.  Resistance to it and trying to ‘go back’ fares little better. This affects human health and sanity, as well a people’s very viability, both physical and societal, and pushes too far to the limits of what people can endure in ‘survival mode’ in their daily life. This is cutting the grass from under the feet of both civilised society and the Homo Sapiens species viability in the biosphere, and brings the overall ‘Existential Risk’. The Animated Geometry (or non-algorithmic ‘Rubber Sheet Geometry’) is a tool that can show how to not go that far in using all the technologies, instruments, machines and techniques, and all the complexification of societal life. The core question is:

Do all humans enjoy and truly want and wish to live on the edge, driven by survival, and to remain at risk of destruction, permanently?

Resources relative to flaring syndromes