It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)

by Karen Tang

This word, hysteria, contains all the judgments and assumptions about female bodies that have existed for thousands of years. It suggests that women’s distressing physical symptoms stem from a combination of anxiety, mental or neurologic weakness, and broken uteri, rather than from not-yet-understood medical conditions.

Through the centuries, hysteria shifted from a disease of the body to one of the mind, but the connection between the supposed flaws of women’s reproductive organs and their mental well-being remained.

The medical community and society in general too often presume that anyone with a working uterus must want to use it for pregnancy, even when people say that they don’t want to conceive or are done having children.

Women continue to be treated as if they need to be protected from their own minds when it comes to reproductive decisions such as birth control, sterilization, and abortion.

The choice of which birth control to use is usually determined by patient preference and trial and error, whereas the type of medications used to treat non-gynecologic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes is based on studies and research.

Gynecologic procedures are reimbursed at significantly lower rates than procedures in any other surgical field, including urology, which treats the male reproductive organs.

Women and people dealing with gynecologic issues have suffered for thousands of years too long, and it’s time to break the cycle. It’s not hysteria, and it never was.

I always say they need to know what normal is before they can understand what it means for something to be abnormal.

Unlike testicles, which can continue producing sperm for a person’s lifetime, the ovaries do not make new oocytes.

During a menstrual cycle, an egg—usually just one—is released, a process called ovulation. Eggs in the ovaries that are not released will eventually break down and be reabsorbed by the body, and the quality of the remaining eggs degrades over time. As someone ages, fertility decreases and the risk of miscarriage and certain genetic conditions, such as Down syndrome, in a fetus increases.

If a period is happening like clockwork once a month, then you can thank the corpus luteum, because it’s hard at work in a very uniform and predictable way. If someone gets pregnant, the corpus luteum and the progesterone that it releases support the pregnancy while it is implanting in the uterus.

Many people are surprised to learn that the fertilization of an egg by sperm happens in the tube, not the uterus. They’re also shocked to hear that after ovulation, the fertile window during which an egg can be fertilized is only twelve to twenty-four hours because the egg is viable for only that short time. If a sperm cell successfully fertilizes an egg, the developing embryo travels down the rest of the tube and implants in the uterus about five to six days after fertilization. An embryo exists for almost a week before it implants in the uterus or produces any detectable pregnancy hormones.

The tissue that lines the cavity is the endometrium, and this loose, glandular tissue grows anew every month to prepare for pregnancy. When pregnancy does occur, the embryo will implant in the endometrium, and the placenta will develop and attach to the endometrial tissue in order to support the growing fetus. If pregnancy doesn’t occur that month, the endometrium will shed and come out as menstrual blood.

Cycle length is the number of days from the first day of full-flow bleeding (not just spotting) to the first day of full-flow bleeding in the next cycle.

Cycle duration is the number of days of active bleeding, not including light spotting. The normal range for cycle duration is two to seven days.

Ovulation usually occurs around the midpoint of the cycle, on average about fourteen days before the next period for a typical twenty-eight-day cycle.

cervical mucus, and uterus, then meet the egg in the fallopian tube, where fertilization occurs. Sperm can live up to five days in the vagina and uterus, so someone can get pregnant if they had sex almost a week before ovulation.

Symptoms may be common, but they don’t need to be tolerated if they are affecting your quality of life.

gender has to do with identity and the social meaning of being female, male, or other,

sex refers to biology, including genes and chromosomes, reproductive organs, genitals, and hormones.

Gender and sex are not interchangeable terms, and neither is limited to a simple m...

The WHO defines gender as the “characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy.” What it means to be a man or woman, masculine or feminine, differs from culture to culture and changes over time.

If someone’s gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth, they are cisgender.

Being transgender means that someone’s gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth.

sexuality refers to who someone is attracted to.

People of all genders can be homosexual (attracted to those of the same gender), heterosexual (attracted to the opposite gender), bisexual (attracted to men and women), pansexual (attracted to people of all genders), or asexual (experience little to no sexual attraction to people of any gender).