kerryg's Women's Health Hubs

This is the collection of hubs I've written about women's health.

As I've written more and more hubs, my "hubography" has become increasingly unwieldy and disorganized, so a few months ago I added a second hubography specifically for my gardening hubs, and I have decided that adding another for my women's health hubs would also be a good idea.

Why I Care About Women's Health

Women's health is one of my biggest interests because it has affected my own life so much.

I suffered from incapacitating menstrual cramps throughout my teens and early 20's. Although my cramps disappeared after I gave birth to my daughter a few years ago, I realized once and for all how completely messed up my hormones really were soon after the birth.

Although I breastfed exclusively until my daughter was old enough to start solids and continued to breastfeed her two to three times a day until she was more than 18 months old, my period returned a mere six weeks after giving birth. Not only that, but for the first six months after they returned, they came every three weeks. In fact, I calculated at one point when my daughter was about three months old that in between the lochia and the periods, I had spent more time since the birth bleeding than not!

In addition to the frequent periods, I started experiencing extreme mood swings and menstrual migraines for the first time in my life, both of which made life miserable for both me and my family.

I had not been impressed with a brief stint on the Pill during my teens, and quickly became tired of doctor after doctor telling me to go back on it. Instead, I began to research alternative options. My interest in the connection between diet and health had begun during my teen years, when I noticed that eating chocolate when I was having cramps was an excellent way to go from merely uncomfortable to writhing on the floor in agony. When I started paying more careful attention to my diet, I noticed that dairy products also tended to make my periods worse.

My interest intensified after having my daughter. I had always assumed that after having a child, my other symptoms would disappear along with my cramps. When I developed new ones instead, I decided it was time to take more serious preventative action, and I dove into the latest research on women's health, particularly hormonal issues. My interest also led me to explore alternative treatments for conditions that I personally have not experienced, but which family members or friends have suffered from, including endometriosis, PCOS, menorrhagia, and early puberty.

I hope you find this collection of hubs useful and informative.

Menstrual cramps are my main area of interest, because they made me miserable for so long. I hope that the information in these hubs will help other women and girls find relief sooner than I did.

Other friends and relatives have come to me for help with their own menstrual problems and I've written hubs on some of these issues in hopes of helping other people in addition to my loved ones.

No matter what the condition, as I researched alternative treatments for many different womens' health problems, a few simple lifestyle changes stood out over and over again as solutions.

The majority of women with painful periods and other menstrual problems report relief of their symptoms when they do these three things:

1. Eat a healthy, balanced diet that is high in dietary fiber, omega 3 fatty acids, and several important vitamins and minerals.
   
2. Exercise regularly.
3. Reduce exposure to endocrine disruptors.

I've written a series of hubs that covers some of the most important of these lifestyle changes in more detail:

Occasionally I write a hub that relates to women's health but isn't really directly connected to any condition or treatment. Here's where I list them:

Finally, I'd like to point you in the direction of a couple more hubs I've written that I consider to be of special interest to women.

A woman's physical health is not the only measure of her quality of life. In many countries around the world, women are treated like second class citizens and denied even basic human rights. Domestic violence remains a problem even in comparatively enlightened countries such as the United States and Europe.