This is The Guardian.

I first went to the doctor when I was about 14 years old to talk about why my periods had started

but were months and months and months apart, unlike all of my peers at school.

And I was told that I was young, they would regulate as I got older and not to worry about it.

The experience Rachel is describing might be familiar to a lot of women.

She didn't know it at the time,

but she had PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome. According to the World Health Organization,

an estimated 10 to 13% of women at reproductive age are affected. 70% don't know they have the condition.

Through Rachel's teenage years, more symptoms appeared.

Really bad acne that would come out of nowhere that was much more extreme than any of my friends were getting or bleeding out of nowhere and not being prepared for it,

having to tie a jumper around my waist because, you know,

I maybe bled through the back of my dress or something.

I just felt different from everybody.

As she got older, Rachel started to gain weight

that she struggled to keep off.

After years of trying to work out what was going on,

she finally got a diagnosis, PCOS.

But the confusion, misconceptions and inadequate medical treatment continued.

Rachel realised there was one major problem underlying it all.

The root causes the name.

Through the charity Verity, Rachel got involved in the effort to rename PCOS.

This is a collective kind of decision of over 22,000 people, patients and healthcare professionals from every continent on the world.

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