agazines constantly highlight issues related to women’s health and medical journals regularly discuss injuries to the brain. But almost never do we read about the overlap between the two subjects. In research, women are often left out due to incorrect assumptions that they don't obtain injuries as often as their male counterparts. But statistically, across the country, someone sustains a traumatic brain injury (TBI) every 13 seconds, and one out of every 60 people in the U.S. live with a TBI-related disability.
People primarily associate brain injuries with athletes or veterans – often neglecting how most injuries occur. In actuality, brain injuries are commonplace in both sexes and come from a variety of everyday activities such as car accidents, falls and sadly, domestic violence. While there are exceptions, males and females are distinctive, and brains are no exception. When an external force causes brain dysfunction, this can range from a temporary shift of brain cells to long-term neural destruction and irreparable tissue damage. Yet the way that males and females express their injury and the length of recovery has limited, but conflicting results.
What we do see consistently though, is that the long-term repercussions of brain injury and concussion are different between the sexes and vary by age and race, and at present, neither the health system nor science has done enough to understand the impact of brain injuries on women or the disparities that exist between them.
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