uteri Archives - Hormones Matter

What if Endometriosis Was a Men’s Health Issue?

Published on October 4, 2013

4371 views

As a health journalist and a co-founder of Endo Warriors, a support organization for women with endometriosis, I often get asked “what is endometriosis?”

Which is funny since it is estimated that 176 million women worldwide have endometriosis and yet no one knows about this global health issue.

Sometimes I say “it’s a secondary autoimmune disease where the lining of the uterus is found outside of the uterus and throughout the abdominal cavity — to varying degrees — causing chronic pain and infertility.

And other times I say “it sucks.”

Nancy Peterson of the ERC said “If 7 million men suffered unbearable pain with sex and exercise and were offered pregnancy, castration or hormones as treatment, Endo would be a national emergency to which we would transfer the defense budget to find a cure.” And, I don’t disagree.

If 7 million American men had unbearable pain every time they ejaculated, no one would ever suggest chopping off their balls. If they went to a health clinic that also offered pregnancy prevention services, we wouldn’t shut those clinics down. If 7 million American men were in pain every time they masturbated, urinated or tried to have sex we wouldn’t tell them “it’s all in their head” or “to take the pain like a man.” No, we would listen and try to find them a cure that didn’t include castration or drug-induced de-masculinization.

But that’s not the case.

Instead we have 7 million American women with chronic pain related to the tissue in their uterus and their menstrual cycle. 7 million American women who have pain before, during and after their menstrual cycle. 7 million American women who experience pain while exercising, having sex and going to the bathroom. So we offer them chemical-menopause and hysterectomies and when those don’t work we throw our hands up in the air and say “well, at least I tried.” Better luck in your next life, perhaps you’ll come back as a man.

The menstrual cycle is the butt of all jokes directed towards women. Bad day? Is it your period? Is Auntie Flo in town?

Seeing red? Are you on the rag?

No, actually I’m just mad that the idea of healthcare for women makes people want to cover their ears and run screaming.

Free birth control for women?

Great idea!

That is until some political pundit insinuates women should just learn to shut their legs.

Maybe instead we should learn to listen to the myriad of women on birth control for issues beyond planning pregnancies. Maybe women should just get easy access to low cost birth-control without having to recite their medical record.

October is health literacy month and when it comes to health literacy, Americans are kindergartners trying to eat the paste off their fingers.

We think Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are two different things; getting outraged at the notion of Obamacare yet think the idea of ‘affordable’ healthcare is quite nice.

Access to low-cost health care for everyone? Let’s shutdown the government!

Rather, if we want the government out of our private healthcare, then how about they get out of our uteri as well?

A New March Madness – Endometriosis Awareness Month

by Jordan Davidson

Published on March 4, 2013

2617 views

This March I am celebrating a different kind of madness. It has nothing to do with college basketball; nor is it related to four leaf clovers, egg shaped candy or seder plates. No, this March is for reproductive health education and raising awareness about endometriosis. There is nothing nice about endometriosis, even the word is cumbersome to say. This March, we need to talk about endometriosis and reproductive health and we are going to talk about it; because the state of reproductive care surrounding endometriosis is not OK and it’s not going to get better until more people know about endometriosis and the facts surrounding it.

It is estimated that 1 out of every 10 women has endometriosis. Endometriosis is a secondary autoimmune disease that occurs when the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) grows outside of the uterus. Common places for this tissue growth is outside of the uterus, on the fallopian tubes, ovaries, bladder, within the pelvic cavity, on the pelvic floor, and on the bowels. In extremely rare cases endometriosis can be found growing up towards and on the liver, lungs, brain and on the central nervous system. These growths respond to the menstrual cycle the same way that the lining of the uterus does. Each month, the lining builds up, breaks down and then sheds (aka ‘your period’).

When a woman gets her period the broken down lining exits the body as menstrual blood through the vagina. When a woman has endometriosis, the tissue and blood from the endometrial growths found outside of the uterus have no way of leaving the body. This results in internal bleeding and inflammation; both of which can cause chronic pain, infertility, scar tissue formation, adhesions and bladder and bowel complications. Women with endometriosis also suffer from higher rates of allergies, yeast infections, asthma, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, other autoimmune diseases (such as hypothyroidism and lupus and others) and increased rates of ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and brain cancer.

There is no cure for endometriosis and treatments leave a lot to be desired. Common treatments include oral contraceptives, GnRH agonists, progesterone therapies, surgery and hysterectomy. Since endometriosis usually appears during the reproductive years, hysterectomy is not a welcomed option and yet is commonly prescribed. Surgery does not cure endometriosis, in many cases the growths reappear within five years. Hysterectomy does not cure endometriosis, with 40% of women see a reoccurrence of their symptoms. There is no cure for endometriosis.

This March we need to raise awareness. It’s not a comfortable topic but that is no reason for millions of women to suffer in silence with no known cure. The discomfort society feels in talking openly about menstruation or uteri or vaginas is no reason to deny any woman the right to proper reproductive care. 1 in 10 women have endometriosis. These women are your friends, neighbors, sisters, co-workers, lovers, girlfriends, cousins, aunts, nieces, mothers, and fellow humans. It takes an average of 7 years to get a proper diagnosis and even longer to find an effective treatment plan (if any). This is about proper reproductive care, about millions of women who are embarrassed to talk about painful periods, about millions of women who suffer in silence. It needs to stop.

This is not a call to arms but a call to uterus(es). This month lets promote reproductive care and raise awareness for endometriosis. Ask me about my uterus, ask those you care about, about their uterus. Yes, it sounds strange, but how else are we to start the discussion and break the stigma against talking about reproductive illness; especially if we can’t even say uterus or vagina without snickering or feeling as embarrassed as a third grader would. Please help us raise awareness this March; share this article, share your story, start a conversation, ask a loved one about their uterus and break the silence!

Unite Walking Uteri: Repair the Economic Moral Fabric, One Woman at a Time

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on October 20, 2011

1410 views

For a website devoted to women’s hormone health research, I seem to write a lot about the current economic and political situation. That may seem odd on the surface, but a deeper dive reveals an inextricable connection. The recession has forced American values into re-alignment and like or not, health is at the center. And women’s health, because we bear children, is at the nexus.

As a woman, who has born children, I take offense to the fact that in political, economic and healthcare debates, women have become no more than walking uteri. From both the political Left and Right, our choices to bear or not bear children seem to represent the sum total of the interest in our health. Sometimes our breast health is considered and on a rare occasion other aspects of our physiology enter into public discourse and even research, but mostly it is our childbearing that garners the attention.

Even so, the pretense that the debates currently dominating the public arena involve anything closely related to women or health is false. These are debates about money and power—getting it and keeping it– and we are simply the tokens of that economy. But we don’t have to be, because as walking uteri, they have failed to recognize one important point- we can walk the other direction.

Although we are only 50% of the population, we consume 80% of the medical care and we control the medical decision-making in most families – that is our power. The makers of HRT know this all too well. They saw their profits drop by as much 70% when the unfounded marketing claims that HRT cured everything came to light. Millions of women transferred their consumer purchasing power to the bio-identical hormone, nutraceutical and other health-related industries. As hospitals began dictating C-sections, a whole movement of home-birth evolved; home-birth in the 21^st century- who could have predicted that? As more and more toxins are found in our foods and especially baby products, companies marketing healthy, organic products are born. Our uteri are walking right out the door and creating entire industries that place health and well-being center stage.

So, while politicians covet big money from the corporations that obliterated the economy and decimated women’s health; while protestors protest the profligate practices of Wall Street (finally) and pundits decide which side of the ratings fence they are on, women are quietly re-building the economy. Inc.com indicates that women lead 40% of all business in the US (2010), but received less than 8% of investment capital. Perhaps as a result of the lower capital, we are better at bootstrapping, have higher growth, better returns and our businesses succeed more frequently than companies led by men. Our companies are less risky; none of the high-flying financial shenanigans that got us into this mess in the first place. Perhaps because of the inequities in healthcare and research perpetrated on women by men interested only in the functionality of our collective uteri, we’re building companies that address women’s health-beyond the uterus. Companies like Lucine, and many, many others.

Are the attempts to de-fund women’s health important, even though they pertain to the most narrow definition of health? Yes. They serve as a reminder that we have more power than we think. We are the consumer market that matters. We can take our consumer buying power and our voting power elsewhere. We can create the industries that matter to us. In doing so, we repair what David Brooks called the ‘moral fabric of our economy.’

Hormone health research and diagnostics matter to me and my colleagues at Lucine. What matters to you?

uteri

Related posts:

You might be interested in

Related posts:

You might be interested in

Related posts:

You might be interested in