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

[MeMarmiteYouJam]

I am not medically trained, but over the years I've realised more and more how misunderstood, under-researched and just generally ignored the female human body is. In terms of the impact of medicines, the cycle of hormones (monthly, and over a lifetime), the difference in immune system responses (it turns out that women might be better protected from the Covid vaccine, for instance, due to a stronger immune response), the impact of thyroid conditions, etc.

There's also just the actual composition of the female body, in that the health of the woman's uterus impacts her entire pelvic health - the uterus holds the bladder and lower intestines in place. My own mother wasn't told about this when she was given a hysterectomy when she was 36, and has dealt with incontinence and constipation for years as a result.

I consider my periods to be a fairly good indicator of how well I am - they went wonky earlier this year as a direct result of massive stress, for example.

Female-centric medicine just doesn't really exist, does it? I find it really frustrating, because a little bit of knowledge and understanding would be a massive help to so many. I don't know much, but I'd like to understand more - what is the lifelong impact on my immune system from having children? How does my breast cancer risk reduce because I've breastfed? What kinds of health issues impact/change a woman's cycle? What is the range of normal for such things? Why do women suffer from endometriosis and why isn't there more options for helping them? etc.

@LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett

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.

I really don’t think this is it.

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

@ChestnutStuffing

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.

This is really interesting @ChestnutStuffing. There is a lot of research in the Catholic sphere which stems from the catholic teaching of not using contraception. A lot of it is very good research that I (GP) would love to have access to, but they won't let me go on a course because I am no catholic/can't say I have never done anything against the teachings/am a lesbian. I might buy the textbook one day, but it is over 200 dollars in the way of US textbooks. There is a woeful lack of research and understanding in general of how women's physiology impacts medicine.

The gate-keeping of women's bodies is never ending.

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!

@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.

@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...

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.