The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: āvery common conditionā āno known causeā āno known cureā :))))))
What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?
Endemetriosis
Vaginal Thrush
Menorrhagia
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Fibroids
Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.
Men are so damn privileged they canāt even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they canāt be affected by one of these conditions.
Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I have, makes you anƦmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.
Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anƦmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.
Chronic pain is overwhelmingly experienced by women, and women are less likely to be taken seriously or given treatment by medical professionals. I went through two years of diagnostics to finally find out I had occipital neuralgia; I felt doubted when I described my pain at every step of the way, but was lucky to have a partner who was persistent in helping me get treatment.
Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.
Donāt forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnantā¦ seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people ātryingā it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination orĀ monetaryĀ benefit of essentially being in a late stageĀ drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after theyāve experienced the adverse affects.Ā
This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication youāre taking (including mental health medication, canāt imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, letās just hope they donāt become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldnāt even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because itās all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum weāve been faced with, letās just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science! Ā
Sources: Nature, Nature, Medscape, Biomedcentral.
Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.
Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?
Except thatās not right at all.
Yes, itās true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but itās basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis - and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.
Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if youāre an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, itās overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.
And yet we tell folks itās just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.
Bonus round: Look up PCOS and gender identity.
Then look up PCOS and diabetes.
Ok, to show how incredibly important this post fucking is, I just looked up endometriosis and I match just about every sympton, and it would explain not just my incredibly painful periods but many other things as well. I had no idea this existed. Please, read this post and reblog this so others can learn.
I will reblog this every time because my cousin (a cis girl) went through seven years of pain without being taken seriously until SHE suggested it was endometriosis. And thatās not even unusual - thatās the average amount of time it takes between first symptoms and a diagnosis of endometriosis.
Only 20-40% of menstruating adults experience cramps???? Fuuuuuck >:[
For all the uterus wielders out there, this I do needs to be spread becuase this very dismissal of women is why women are overwhelmingly the majority of alternative (and even less effective) āmedicineā users, becuase they have justifiable lack of faith in typical medicine.
