I have dealt with female medical bias/gaslighting my entire life. It almost killed me twice (doctors refusing to recognize infections and not prescribing me medicine). I will check ot the link when I have the mental capacity. Thanks for sharing.

My main conditions are Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (translates to muscle pain and brain and spinal cord inflammation) and POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome -a form of dysautonomia). I have a lot of other conditions related to these like autoimmunity, nerve damage and way too much to get into.

ME is a multi system neuro-immune disease that causes impaired immune function, crippling pain and fatigue, cognitive dysfunction , exertion intolerance ,nerve and muscle damage, mitochondrial dysfunction and all kinds of other symptoms. It is basically a "sister" illness to MS (multiple sclerosis) and long covid and other post infections/immune conditions . Roughly half of what we call "long covid" is ME.

POTS is a type of dysautonomia meaning dysfunction the in autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is our body's autopilot, and regulates blood pressure, temperature regulation, breathing rate, digestion and more. Basically all of the things that keep us alive that we do not have to think about.

With POTS patients have all of these symptoms of dysautonomia (and more)plus when we are upright either sitting or standing blood doesn't flow to our brains the way it does in healthy people (we also often are hypovolemic meaning we do not have enough blood volume). This can cause fainting or near fainting as well as exasperate other symptoms. The symptoms of the dysautonomia do not just go away when we lie down, we just don't faint.

I have had both of these conditions since childhood over 30 years ago. I now am stuck lying in bed for 23.5 out of 24 hours everyday. Otherwise I will go into syncope (fainting/near fainting).

These are complicated illnesses and there are very few specialist who treat us. Frankly a lot of specialists do not actually know enough about thee illnesses to treat patients and still see these conditions as psychological -they are not. Though we are in the millions doctors do not want to treat us and expect us to go from specialist to specialist as if we were healthy people. This is also very expensive in the United States.

Doctors treat complicated patients all the time. Doctors treat and are aware of rare diseases . MS for example is roughly 1/5 the patient population of ME. POTS is even more common . Doctors always know what MS is but no nothing about ME and often tell patients to do things that will harm them even further.

Despite the lack of funding there are decades of research for both ME and POTS. ME has been studied and found physiological abnormalities since at least the 1970's in the US (It was re named "chronic fatigue syndrome" in the 80's during mono outbreak) and since then it has been psychologized in the symptoms are all in the patient's head/the patient's fault despite decades of evidence proving that wrong.

It really is the medical scandal of the century but no one has really heard about it. It is estimated over 100 million people worldwide suffer from ME. Most patients are not diagnosed/misdiagnosed so that number is actually on the low side of estimation.

Both of the diseases have zero FDA approved treatments despite patients having quality of life scores similar to AIDS, cancer and congestive heart failure. This is not to discredit the suffering of people with these conditions it is just fact. Don't just take my word for it, feel free to use the internet to verify every claim I have made. It is backed by science.

We are very sick and suffer everyday and no doctor will even take us seriously even with confirmed abnormal test findings. My story is not unique-it is typical.

Roughly 70-80% of patients are female (for both ME and POTS estimates). If it were reversed and these diseases mostly affected males we would have treatments readily available.

Women have more autoimmune issues than men. Autoimmunity is linked to both ME and POTS -at least in the subgroup of patients I belong to. POTS can have other causes but is not really studied all that well .

I can't even get a doctor to take my symptoms seriously and treat those. Doctors do not care and even judge me poorly for being bed/homebound as if it is a choice I am making and not due ot decades of medical neglect. I am way too sick to keep trying to go to different doctors. No one will help me. They just don't care. I mean I am only a woman after all. Not a full fledged human being that deserves a decent quality of life(sarcasm).