Medicine has barely studied women
Until 1993, women of reproductive age were effectively excluded from most clinical trials in the United States. The official reason: hormonal fluctuations "complicate the data".
Medications were tested on men. Dosages were calculated for the male body. The symptoms of women's diseases were never systematically described. Even today, women are diagnosed an average of 7–10 years later than men with the same conditions.
We are living in an age when the science of the female body is only truly beginning to be born. And that means one thing: the best expert on your body is you yourself — if you begin to observe.
Sources
- NIH Revitalization Act (1993). orwh.od.nih.gov/toolkit/recruitment/history
- Holdcroft A. Gender bias in research: how does it affect evidence based medicine? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2007; 100(1):2–3. doi: 10.1177/014107680710000102
- Mazure CM, Jones DP. Twenty years and still counting: including women as participants and studying sex and gender in biomedical research. BMC Women’s Health, 2015; 15:94. doi: 10.1186/s12905-015-0251-9
WooMoonRead in the app →