245 - How medicine has failed women, with author Elinor Cleghorn

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

Dr Louise Newson

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Medicine

4.8 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week Dr Louise is joined by feminist cultural historian Dr Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women, which unpacks the roots of the misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women’s bodies, illness and pain. From the ‘wandering womb’ of ancient Greece to today’s shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Elinor tells Dr Louise how the book draws on her own experience of being dismissed by doctors for years before finally being diagnosed with systemic lupus, an autoimmune condition which is nine times more prevalent among women than men. In the episode, Dr Louise and Elinor discuss how women’s health, including menopause, has been viewed through the ages, and the misconceptions that need to be consigned to the history books once and for all. Follow Dr Elinor on Instagram @elinorcleghorn Click here to find out more about Newson Health

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr Louise Newsome. I'm a GP and menopause specialist, and I'm also the founder of the Newsome Health Menopause and wellbeing centre here in Stratford-Pon-Avon.
0:21.6	I'm also the founder of the free Balance app.
0:25.6	Each week on my podcast, join me and my special guests where we discuss all things perimenopause
0:31.6	and menopause. We talk about the latest research, bust myths on menopause symptoms and treatments,
0:38.2	and often share moving and always inspirational personal stories.
0:43.7	This podcast is brought to you by the Newsome Health Group,
0:46.9	which has clinics across the UK dedicated to providing individualised perimenopause and menopause care for all women.
1:02.3	So I've been incredibly excited about this podcast. I felt like it was Christmas this morning
1:06.9	when I woke up because I've got with me in the studio a well-known author called
1:11.3	Eleanor Clickhorn and I'm going to hold up her book which is very well-thumbed. It's got lots of
1:17.0	pages turned down and it's called Unwell Women and I read it a while ago in fact when it first
1:23.7	came out and paperback and then I reread it recently because I was on a long
1:27.8	flight to Australia, and I wanted to just have uninterrupted time. And I just felt really cross,
1:35.1	I felt really sad, and I felt like I just wanted to shout the pages out to everyone on the
1:40.7	plane or anyone that would listen. And now I've got Eleanor in front of me on the podcast. So that's why I'm very excited. So thank you so much for joining me today, Eleanor.
1:49.1	Oh, thank you so much for having me and for such kind words about the book. Well, it's very
1:53.9	interesting. So I tell you, I used to be a prolific reader. And then I started to do menopause work and I'm bit swamped with work at the minute and I really
2:02.7	regret I don't regret much because there's not much you can change from the past of course but
2:07.3	I do regret like not reading as much as I do and that's just because I need sleep and I train myself to
2:13.7	sleep less because I still need to sleep yes but when your book first came out and paperback, not that long ago now,
2:19.2	but I started reading it and I only read the first few pages and then obviously went to sleep.
2:24.3	But I thought, oh, this is so true, this is so right. But if I'd read it 10 years ago,
	...

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