The roles of female organs and hormones in the human body in maintaining good health

We don't even really understand women's sexual health. it's seen as far as "can ou get a penis in?"

As if that's all there is to sex.

Some of us don't much fancy penises anyway.

@MangoFeverDream I don’t remember those particular details - that could well be the case.

The thing that stood out for me was the fact that it was one of the first new drugs that had come along in a long time that looked like it had some serious potential to help a lot of women who suffer badly every month with a new type of treatment (rather than a variant on paracetamol or ibuprofen for example) that worked in a new way to beat the symptoms and for which there was much hope but they decided not to carry on investigating it as they might have done if it didn’t have effects on men or say just helped their headaches - they actively didn’t want it to work as they felt it would have negative consequences when they were trying to sell it to men for erectile dysfunction, which they judged to be the more important market for them...

@MangoFeverDream I don’t remember those particular details - that could well be the case.

The thing that stood out for me was the fact that it was one of the first new drugs that had come along in a long time that looked like it had some serious potential to help a lot of women who suffer badly every month with a new type of treatment (rather than a variant on paracetamol or ibuprofen for example) that worked in a new way to beat the symptoms and for which there was much hope but they decided not to carry on investigating it as they might have done if it didn’t have effects on men or say just helped their headaches - they actively didn’t want it to work as they felt it would have negative consequences when they were trying to sell it to men for erectile dysfunction, which they judged to be the more important market for them...

@wibdib

I read something about that a few years ago. But it had to be administered vaginally instead of orally? And the dosage was much higher than for ED so there were safety issues?

I think it was more complicated than you are letting on.

That said, I really do think women are underserved by the medical industry, but I think it’s due to incompetence (i.e. being thought of as smaller men than separate beings with functionally different bodies) being rather than malice.

As others have mentioned, Invisible Women has some good stuff on this (including @MangoFeverDream the fact that Viagra was found to be really effective for helping women deal really well with chronic bad period pain, which there is very little around, drug-wise, that works. But they didn’t bother to follow it up because they thought they wanted for men and thought that if it was also sold to women to help period pain it would stop men wanting it for its current purpose so they haven’t pursued that avenue - and all its associated revenue - because they worried about the effect on their sales to men, despite the fact that it would have been life changing to many women and thus provided a sizeable chunk of income too).

However shortly after IW there was another book published that was specifically about medicine and women and the differences in the way women are treated and the way drugs act differently etc. I meant to read it at the time but life got in the way so I haven’t and have now lost the reference too. Doh.

But it’s worth looking out for it as it sounded a fascinating book and maybe someone on here will remember what it is!

If they can sell something to half of humanity, you’d better believe they will. But there’s just so much we don’t know about the menstrual cycle and how to affects the body’s hormones.

And it’s so individual, which makes studying it really complicated. But I hope there are determined physicians who will, because it’s such an important area of medicine that will improve women’s lives

That's awful Lemon.

I've been reading stuff by Lara Briden who is Australian. Basically a nutritionist but has really researched period health. Some recent posts on her Instagram are interesting in that she talks about the importance of ovulation as being important for long term health eg osteoporosis (references a research dr) and how a period is a monthly health "report card," as well as a range of ways of addressing wonky challenging periods.

I wish mainstream science took this stuff as seriously as well as providing the information to women to seek help.

When I was reading about prolapse (prior to surgery) I found out a lot about fascia and ligaments that hold our pelvic organs in place.

They form part of our structure and removing the uterus interrupts this. It can lead to change of shape.

Loss of oestrogen at menopause also affects these structures.

Mine is looking the worse for wear since meno struck.

Also Lemon, that sounds horrendous.

I had no idea that hysterectomies could cause those side-effects - that is awful.

Yy to women just not being acknowledged in medical trials, training or priorities. Surely that's got to change over time?

I only discovered yesterday that 1 in 5 UK women will have a hysterectomy at some point.
55,000 a year.

www.bmihealthcare.co.uk/health-matters/health-and-wellbeing/hysterectomy-your-questions-answered

I was put on the pill in my early 20s to try to sort my crappy skin. It triggered migraines which have blighted my life ever since (am now 40). I'm disabled, in continual pain, unable to walk to the loo some days, was lucky to have a "normal" child as my medication causes birth defects but we didn't know until I was already pregnant (we were lucky, TBH) but can't risk it again so DD is an only child. Lost my job, due to sick leave. Losing my memory. Struggle to read, I'm gradually losing skills I previously had. Lots of consequences. Basically it's destroyed my life. But because I was the one-in-a-million that had an exceptionally bad reaction, nothing was done. I was told that I was lucky that at least it hadn't been a stroke. Most stroke victims are better after 18 years, if they survive.

Ironically, roaccutane, which is a fairly poisonous drug with generally pretty awful side effects, I managed just fine. Two full courses of it.

Schizophrenia age of onset in women tends to be in two peaks, one 3-5 years later than typical male onset and one age 40+, possibly relative to declining estrogen. I was surprised because as a mental health clinician I never knew this and training, early intervention and services all seem to focus on the mainly young male age of onset from late teens.

I have a condition that peaks in women aged 50-60 and can be fatal (affects men too but not in such high numbers). I asked my consultant about the effects of the menopause and he had no idea. It was left to me to read through medical journals to discover HRT reduces mortality for this condition and then I had to tell my GP I wanted HRT for a different reason, as preventing you dying apparently doesn't count. I think this is shocking, and I only was able to find out the information because I'm used to reading research papers anyway.

One of my friends has been doing research re hormones and military training (he's a Dr in the Airforce). There must be similar research in sport.

Invisible Women is very good on this topic. There really has been generation on generation of systematic bias towards men's healthcare needs in the developing world. Women need to speak out a lot more about this to drive change, but a lot of this intersects with capitalism - healthcare improvements are driven by pharma companies who tend to centre men's needs for profit reasons. If one-tenth of the energy and expertise that went into viagra had gone into women's health care... but dead women will never be as important as the mighty peen.

This is something I am beginning to research more about. 'Invisible women' talks a little bit about this in drug design and medical trials. I came across Dr Stacey Sims listening to a podcast by the food medic and she speaks at great length at this from an athlete POV. It all revolves around women are not small men. We have our own hormone cycle that means our bodies don't behave the same as men in all respects. I have just started reading 'the xx brain' by dr Lisa Mosconi and she talks in depth about the roles female hormones can affect development of Alzheimer's but she sets the scene discussing how, again, women are not smaller versions of men.

The athlete perspective is interesting for me know as it helped me understand how my cycle affects my training and it can actually be beneficial. I always thought I would avoid hrt when older as I hate synthetic hormones but now I am not so sure and I am doing my reset.

This is a short version but can dig out the food medic podcast if helpful. m.youtube.com/watch?v=e5LYGzKUPlE

Oh don't get me started on balancing thyroid stuff and hormones. It all went drastically wrong as soon as I wanted to go on the pill (that's when hypothyroidism was worsened and found) then years of trying to get the right balance, then it all went wrong again during pregnancy and now peri menopause.

Bugger all research. Each time I've had to find out the hard way that there could be an issue. I've just recently found out for eg that tsh rises mid cycle if on thyroxine. Not much but enough to skew some results.

And trying to make sense of how hormones go skew wiff in the run up to menopause, and associated symptoms, is impossible.

Lots of women have issues around their menstrual cycle that go undiagnosed, many doctors don't have much training in that area and the go to response seems to be "try going on the Pill". I've known of a few women who only made some progress after visiting Catholic doctors from the Pope John VI Institute, which has done a lot of specialised research on women's reproductive cycles. Most doctors seem to be largely unaware of any of that research.