Madison Ayers Writes

Women Are Being Coerced into Birth Control in Their Most Vulnerable Moments

“When Crystina Hughes, a thirty-five-year-old Black woman, went to the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital to give birth, she wasn’t considering birth control.

Immediately after giving birth to her daughter, a doctor asked if she wanted to get an IUD inserted. After all, her cervix was already dilated. Hughes said no, but once her husband left for the neonatal ICU with their newborn, the doctor asked again: Could he insert an IUD?

In her vulnerability, Hughes assumed that it must be important to have the IUD inserted now, so she relented. Around six weeks postpartum, her milk dried up, and she had to have the IUD removed after her uterus prolapsed.”

A Beginner’s Look at Home-Fermentation

“You might be aware of the fact that you are not quite alone in your body—you are also the home to trillions of bacteria and other microbes that make up what’s called the gut microbiome. These many microbes are crucial for countless aspects of our health, including our brain function, immune system, digestion, heart health, and metabolism. . .

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking a probiotic supplement, but they’re simply not necessary if you’re aiming to improve your gut health. Humans have been feeding their microbiomes practically since we began feeding ourselves; we just didn’t understand the immense benefits we were receiving.

Fermented foods have long been a staple of the human diet, as fermentation (the process of microorganisms like yeast or bacteria breaking down sugars in food and producing carbon dioxide, as well as either alcohol or acid) is a means of preserving perishable food. Fermented foods can provide even more benefit than an expensive probiotic supplement—plus, they’re delicious!”

Anti-inflammatory diet can help teens with PCOS, study finds

“Did you know that almost one out of every ten teenage girls has Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)? Though PCOS might not appear that common, the vast majority of sufferers go undiagnosed for years [1]. This is especially problematic for teenage girls who are still getting used to their cycle, and then have to deal with PCOS symptoms like irregular cycles, weight gain, and acne. Given that irregular cycles are normal and expected in the first year or two of cycling, it can be difficult for teens to know which symptoms are “just part of puberty” versus those that need to be discussed with their doctor.

No matter their body type, most women with PCOS are well aware that their condition negatively affects their metabolism and overall health. One recent study by Polish and Italian researchers sought to address these very issues with the simplest of medicines: food. The study, known hereafter as “Mizgier, M. et al.,” put a group of teenage girls of varying body types with PCOS on an anti-inflammatory Mediterranean diet to see whether it would improve their overall nutrition and metabolic health [2].

While the researchers found promising results with a Mediterranean diet, there were some points of contrast with other studies on diet and PCOS. In this article, we’ll explore Mizgier, M. et al.’s results, and we’ll take a look at how their prescribed diet was similar to (or different from) other studies on diet and PCOS.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

What The New York Times misses on the birth control / low libido connection

““I am convinced birth control destroyed my sex drive” says the title of a Reddit post in r/TwoXChromosomes, a women’s issues forum. Hundreds of comments follow with women describing how being on the Pill has completely changed their sex drive—and not for the better. “When I was on hormonal BC, I completely lost my sex drive” says one commenter. “[Birth control] destroyed mine and took the better part of a year to come back so I could experience what a natural female sex drive felt like,” says another.

But you don’t have to go down Reddit rabbit holes to discover women who are pinpointing their birth control as the culprit behind their weak libidos. This woman on Tiktok describes getting her libido back just days after going off the Pill, and there are a plethora of other videos describing how to fix low libido caused by birth control.

It’s not just individual women on social media who are opening up about this touchy subject — even The New York Times picked up on it. In a January 2024 article titled “The Link Between Birth Control and Sex Drive”, the author delves into what we know about how birth control can change your sex drive. While the NYT article gets a lot right, it ultimately misses the complete picture: birth control radically changes sex for every woman who takes it, on top of its disastrous effects on sex drive for some.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

Is it true that puberty blockers “pause” puberty?

“When Chloe Cole was 12, she began to question whether or not she was a girl. By her thirteenth birthday, she was put on “puberty blockers“—the catchall name for the drugs that suppress the hormones that regulate the reproductive system in adolescent girls and boys. Soon after, Chloe began taking testosterone, also known as T, to masculinize her features. Just two years later, at the age of 15, she underwent a double mastectomy to amputate both of her (healthy) breasts; a procedure typically reserved for breast cancer patients. This irreversible surgery–usually preceded by breast binding in the cascade of transgender interventions–is euphemistically called “top surgery.”

Chloe recently described her story in great detail in an interview with psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson. She explained how she had no idea how chest binding would affect her developing breasts, nor, as a 15-year-old, had she considered the loss of her future ability to breastfeed. “I also wasn’t really thinking at all about being a parent at all because I was… I was a kid,” she said.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

Five Science-Backed Daily Habits to Improve Your Summer Routine

“Although New Year’s Day is the typical time of year for resolution-setting, life often gets in the way of our plans. But losing momentum toward achieving a specific goal doesn’t have to mean that all hope is lost! Mid-year is also a great time to reevaluate your routines and goals, especially with shifts in lifestyles as we enter into summer.

Longer days mean more time to introduce and get comfortable with healthy habits. I’ve slowly implemented the following five habits into my days and have found vast improvement in both my physical and mental health. This list isn’t aimed at any specific end goal, but instead includes evidence-based, common-sense choices that are quick and easy to fold into the busiest of days. Plus, they can be completely free.”

How does blood sugar change over the course of the menstrual cycle?

“It has never been easier to accurately track our health. With smart watches, continuous glucose monitors, and a plethora of fertility monitoring devices, we now have the ability to gather precise data on many of our various biomarkers. A recent study from the University of Toronto and Queen’s University in Canada used various biotechnologies to allow participants to draw connections between their menstrual cycle and their blood sugar [1]. The conclusions from this study will help women with diabetes better tailor their insulin dosages. Women who are insulin resistant or pre-diabetic can also use this data to more fully understand how to naturally control their blood glucose.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

Natural Womanhood Book Review: Real Food for Gestational Diabetes

“For many women who have gone through pregnancy, their experience with gestational diabetes (GD) begins and ends with the infamous glucose tolerance test, where they drink the sickly sweet “glucola” and get their blood glucose levels tested. But for the roughly one-in-ten pregnant woman who’s given a GD diagnosis, the process of tracking blood sugar and understanding how food affects insulin levels becomes a central part of her pregnancy.

Real Food for Gestational Diabetes is a short volume from dietician Lily Nichols that takes a new approach to controlling GD through diet and exercise. With a mountain of research supporting her, Nichols helps readers understand their gestational diabetes diagnoses by giving them the tools to take their pregnancy health into their own hands. In our Real Food for Gestational Diabetes book review, we share the strengths and limitations of Nichols’ book and our recommendation on whether to buy, borrow, or pass.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

Verily’s “While You Were Out”

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of contributing to issues of “While You Were Out”, Verily Magazine’s weekly news roundup. I was able to write on the GOP primaries, Supreme Court decisions, immigration, and more. You can read these news blurbs from Verily here:

What is gender-specific medicine and how will it help women get better medical care?

“During her 2022 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson was asked a surprisingly hot-button question: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” The now-Supreme Court Justice replied, “I can’t… I’m not a biologist.”

But does it really take a biologist to define what it means to be a woman or a man? After all, even infants as young as three months of age can distinguish between male and female faces [1].

Justice Jackson’s answer does point to a bit of truth, however. Certain aspects of what makes a woman a woman (or what makes a man a man) can be gleaned from scientific studies that go more than skin-deep. Gender-specific medicine (also called sex/gender-specific medicine or sex-and-gender-sensitive medicine in medical research), is a new field of science that seeks to discover exactly this: how male and female bodies differ in their disease development and response due to differences below the surface, from their hormones, to their brain structures, to their internal physiology, and even down to their DNA. In other words, gender-specific medicine recognizes (and aims to further discover) the inherent differences between men and women and the vast implications those differences have for how medicine can best treat both male and female patients.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.