Welcome to Natural MD Radio, your place to hear the whole truth on health and medicine for women and children and get the tools you need to take back your health naturally starting now.

I'm Dr. Aviva Rong. Did you know that on average it takes up to five years for a woman struggling with the symptoms of an autoimmune disease to get an accurate diagnosis.

Women with Hashimoto's symptoms, for example, often fall through the cracks,

sometimes suffering for years with brain fog, fatigue, weight gain,

inability to lose weight, depression and anxiety, and

sometimes serious hormonal challenges like infertility or recurrent miscarriages

before getting properly diagnosed and treated.

And for women with endometriosis, just for example,

a shocking 9.3 years of pain and other symptoms on average

before a diagnosis is made.

It doesn't end there.

At least 5,000 more women die of heart attacks in the hospital each year than men.

Let me make that even more clear. Women already in the hospital who then report heart attack symptoms

are more likely to die of a heart attack than men in the same situation.

Why? We're more likely to be told it's anxiety or stress and we're more

likely to be given a sleep, anxiety, or pain medication whereas men are more

likely to, guess what, receive an appropriate cardiac workup.

Thousands of women have written to me with stories not just of being medically

dismissed but medically mistreated to the extent that I feel it's time for a

hashtag for medical abuse sort of like hashtag me too medical. Just for example

recently a Latina woman told me, upon hearing she was having

chest pain, that her doctor told her she was a hysterical Cuban woman. Another woman told me regarding her weight, that her doctor told her

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