PCOS and Social Media: What the Research Really Shows (Episode 581)

Full Transcript: Episode 581

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 581.

Today I’m diving into an interesting research study that is looking at the impact of the online conversation that is happening about PCOS. So the title of the study is “Understanding PCOS-Related Content Across Social Media Platforms.” And so we’re going to dive into what these researchers are saying and ultimately the potential impact that social media is having on how women are learning about different health-related reproductive health, menstrual health issues, as well as how this could be affecting the medical profession. And I think it gives us a little bit of insight into what could be coming our way and what already is coming our way as a result of the impact of social media.

I find it absolutely fascinating that this is something that I’m seeing more and more of in the research where it’s kind of like maybe before they were in denial of the impact that this kind of very public conversation about these common health issues is having. I firmly believe that it’s a situation of we’ve lost the plot, right? Like we before controlled the dissemination of information. We could control the conversation. We could tell them exactly what we want them to hear about the condition and we could direct them to what we want them to do about it and really downplay every other alternative. But now social media is becoming a thing and it’s just like women are just doing what they want. They’re coming out of our control situations and accessing information as they see fit and having a very public conversation about it. So, we’re going to dive into what this study has to say and what some of the implications are and I think it’s really going to be a fascinating discussion.

So, in this particular study, they were focusing on three platforms in particular. They were focusing on TikTok, they were focusing on Instagram and Reddit. I don’t think that they mentioned Twitter. Those were their main places where they were looking at. And so essentially what the researchers did is for a period of time — and so depending on the platform they kind of base it on the platform — but for a period of time they would kind of search whether they’re searching hashtags or they’re searching topics related to PCOS specifically and they wanted to get a sense of what the conversation was, what some of the themes were that were coming out, what women were actually talking about, and what is the outcome, what is the potential result under it. And so I mean they came to the conclusion that there’s a whole lot of conversation happening about PCOS online and so then I guess the question that comes out of that is like, well, what do we do about it?

So the way that they are introducing this information is that obviously PCOS is a very prevalent issue. So estimates are about 15%, one in six women are dealing with PCOS symptoms. And anybody who has been around the podcast for a while, talked about PCOS quite a bit. There’s a lot of challenges in PCOS. So in Real Food for Fertility, I shared a study that examined women’s experiences of getting a diagnosis for PCOS. And on average, it was taking several years and multiple providers for women to actually get an accurate diagnosis of PCOS. As you know, many women who have some of the classic symptoms of PCOS, particularly long irregular cycles, polycystic ovaries, even the acne component of it due to the hyperandrogen situation. When women go to their doctors with this issue, they’re basically told to go on the pill, right? And that is the kind of standard situation. The standard response is if you’re not actively trying to get pregnant right now, we’ll put you on the pill. If you don’t want to go on the pill, but maybe you’re trying to get pregnant, we’ll put you on metformin, which is an insulin sensitizing drug that is used in cases of diabetes, which also has some serious GI-related side effects. So, you know, women who use metformin long term are often more susceptible to significant GI distress as a result of the medication.

So basically what you have is a situation where we have the status quo and this is what we basically do for this condition, which is not treat it really, we’re just trying to do symptom management, and you have a bunch of women who are dissatisfied and who want better answers or just who want maybe to do it in a different way. There’s a growing population of women who are really wanting natural alternatives. Maybe we want to have other alternatives than simply hormonal birth control, especially when we learn more about it.

So, like I said, I feel like this is a situation of we’ve lost the plot because these researchers are kind of like, what’s going on? Why are all these women going to social media channels to talk about this and who’s controlling that information, right? So what they’re saying, and I’ll quote this from the paper — patients express frustration over what they perceive as gaps in their medical provider’s knowledge of PCOS and dismissal of their concerns. Isn’t that interesting? I love the language in these papers. They are perceiving that there are gaps in the medical provider’s knowledge and they’re perceiving that their concerns are being dismissed. It’s just so ridiculous.

So obviously there is a gap in knowledge. In that same research paper that I shared that I talked about in Real Food for Fertility, I mean they flat out said that a significant percentage of the medical providers like reproductive endocrinologists — not even your GP, like your general practitioner. These were the specialists in endocrine health. So in the same study that found that it took multiple years and multiple practitioners for the average woman with PCOS to receive a clear diagnosis, they also found that nearly one-third of reproductive endocrinologists and two-thirds of OBGYNs — again, these are practitioners who should know better, these are beyond your just general practitioner, these are the doctors that have highly specialized in the field of endocrinology and obstetrics — one-third of reproductive endocrinologists and two-thirds of OBGYNs could not identify the currently recommended criteria for diagnosis, which is the Rotterdam criteria.

So again, like it’s interesting. I’m already picking on this paper because of the language, but it’s like, oh, these women, they’re just like they’re frustrated because they feel like their doctors don’t have the knowledge and they feel like their concerns are being dismissed. But it’s not like they feel like that’s happening, like it’s happening. And of course there are gaps in knowledge because research comes out every single day. A lot of these practitioners — I mean, they’re so busy with their practices, you know, who has time to read all these papers all the time, right?

So that’s kind of the background where they do kind of know why women are going to social media to get information, why they’re going to the internet, why they’re doing searches, why they’re looking for information. But they still kind of downplay, right, the seriousness of it, because all these women just think that their doctors aren’t listening to that, right? And so they go on to say that the internet is highly utilized by women, especially adolescents, to learn about reproductive issues. And at the end of the day, I think that what this paper does do is it does point out some of the challenges. So I feel like there are some takeaways. I’m not just going to poo poo this whole conversation around using the internet to find information. At the end of the day, anybody can put up an account, anybody can put up a page. And so there is a lot of stuff out there that’s questionable for sure. In this day and age, I think that at the end of the day, it’s definitely user beware. So when we are searching for information about various conditions, we do have to make sure that we are doing our very best to look at sources who are credible, all of those kinds of things.

So I would certainly say that they do point out legitimate concerns in this paper because what they’re saying is well all these women they’re searching TikTok and they’re searching Instagram and they’re going on Reddit, right? And so they’re saying like, who are the people that they’re getting information from? And they’re saying like, a lot of this information is wrong. But I do feel like in this paper they do paint some things with a broad brush. Kind of like the general sense I get from this paper is that what they’re saying is that anything outside of using oral contraceptives and metformin is basically not scientific. I feel like they’re taking it too far and basically saying like none of it is relevant unless it’s a medical doctor that’s talking. So we’ll get into that more, but ultimately they do highlight some of the key reasons why women are seeking this type of information. So they’re saying that in contrast to traditional counseling, the internet is favored by these women because of its privacy, accessibility, convenience, and ability to provide a sense of control over the information they receive.

So obviously, what are women looking for? We’re looking for actual answers from credible sources who are not just dismissing us. We are looking for answers to the questions. At the end of the day, what I would say in the defense of all of these women who are looking online is that we actually went to our doctors. If the research tells us anything like the paper about the PCOS diagnosis scenario, these women tried. They went to multiple doctors. I was talking to a client yesterday and she was talking about her undiagnosed endometriosis and she’s like, I went to doctor after doctor after doctor for years looking for answers. So it’s not even like we’re not going to you guys. Like we’re coming to you. We’re asking our questions. So the problem is certainly deeper. And so I think that we have to — like, I just like to add to this conversation around the social media use because in the research they’re really putting down these women for seeking alternative support. But no one’s listening. We went, we came to your office. You search, you go to this doctor, this doctor didn’t really take me seriously. Go to the next one. There’s a systemic issue in medical care because the medical care is based on the model of a pill for every ill. It’s not necessarily based on look for the underlying factor root cause. So as the needs of women, especially related to concerns about reproductive health, as these needs are shifting, the medical system is just too big to move fast.

So unless there’s a huge shift in actual medicine to focus more on the root cause situation, we’re going to continue to have this mismatch of what we’re being provided at our doctor’s office and what we actually want.

So they looked at a few things though. So from their perspective, they were saying health misinformation is highly prevalent. They’re saying that the content creators — which this is something that we’ll talk about because it is important — they’re saying that a lot of the content creators are motivated by what they called conflicts of interest, which is true in some cases, meaning that a lot of the influencers online, they are actually promoting products, supplements, they have affiliate promotions that they do. They’re offering coaching services, right? Like myself. And so what they’re saying — so this was an interesting spin on it, though — they’re saying that well because they are promoting these supplements and because they’re maybe promoting their coaching services, it might incentivize the sharing of what they called unreliable information.

So I think that what they — again they’re painting with a broad brush — but at the same time, I don’t know if the average consumer like, does the average consumer know right, that when someone’s promoting certain products and when they have their own brand of supplements and that kind of thing, like do they know? I think the important thing is to be aware. So if you’re following an individual who owns a supplement company, then that person is incentivized to provide you information that would show you why you should use their supplements particularly, right? And if they’re promoting this product or that product — product placement advertising is something that’s so prevalent for anyone who uses any of these social media channels. I think we’re all used to ads and promotion and things like that.

And there is a benefit to finding a reliable source. Somebody who you know really like stands for what they believe. They have a good base of knowledge. They have the professional designation that you’re looking for. You trust their opinion and you value it. I feel like for many of us then when you have this trusted person who we know does that research, it is actually really helpful if they’re recommending products that make sense and are in line with what they stand for, because in a way you can kind of trust that that due diligence has been done. So I feel like this isn’t always a negative thing to have people who are promoting products, because at the end of the day like if you do specialize in a certain field and you do have a specialized knowledge and you are vetting these products, then for many people it’s helpful to have at least that suggestion recommendation that has already been vetted.

So I don’t think it’s always negative, but at the same time we have to recognize that for many of these individuals on social media, this is a business. And so we do have to kind of question, well, why are they making this post or why are they saying these things, and that kind of thing. And everybody isn’t at the same standard. So in this particular paper, they are pointing out some of those buyer-beware issues that we should know about. And so that is something to think about when you’re looking at a variety of different accounts — what are they selling and how does their content relate to what they’re selling and do I feel comfortable with that content? Am I vetting it? And I think potentially for the younger generation, this is something where I don’t know how well the young people are being educated.

So they also point out another inherent challenge — or just fact — about social media channels, which is that the information that is on these social media channels does have the potential to reach just an unfathomable amount of people. And so I suppose from that perspective of like we’re losing the plot, we no longer have control of this conversation — you can have somebody go totally viral saying stuff that isn’t even true, right? Just because it’s catchy. So again, there are implications to this and this is what they’re pointing out.

So again, like I said, what they did is they looked at these three different media channels. They chose a specific time frame and they searched for content related to PCOS to find out what was out there and then they analyzed what that data showed. They looked at what specific topics were discussed under the kind of umbrella of PCOS. They looked at how much attention, how many views these topics were getting. And then they did their own assessment on the quality of the information and identified what they termed misinformation.

So they certainly did find obviously that there was a whole lot of conversations about PCOS happening. They found a ton of conversations happening on TikTok, a ton of conversations on Instagram as well as Reddit. They did talk about the differences between the platforms. And with Reddit, it’s obviously more of a conversational situation where people are posting their questions like, “I have this problem. Has anyone had this issue?” That kind of thing. Whereas with TikTok and Instagram, it tends to be like somebody actually just providing information and then consuming. And of course there’s different comments and things and a bit of interaction, but obviously it’s a little bit different with these platforms.

So one of the things that they said is compared with posts about supplements, it was less common for posts to mention contraceptive pills or other prescribed medications. Negative portrayals of medical institutions were featured prominently, whereas minimal numbers of posts referenced studies or evidence-based research involving PCOS. So they’re saying across these social media channels, they notice a trend to recommend a lot of supplements and to kind of downplay the medical aspects of it and to kind of downplay the contraceptive angle. Now, none of this is surprising. I feel like this surprises exactly no one. This is exactly what I was saying at the beginning and this is exactly what they were saying at the beginning. They were saying that the women who are seeking support from their providers are finding that they feel that there are gaps in the knowledge and they don’t feel like they’re being heard and listened to. So they’re searching social media for an alternative. So it makes sense that they’re looking for alternatives to what they’re being provided, because again the list is very short when you go to your doctor with a PCOS-related concern: the birth control pill or metformin. So yes, that is not a surprise, right?

They say these findings suggest that traditional interventions may be of less interest to users who seek PCOS information on social media, particularly given the tendency of wellness influencers to promote alternative therapies while sowing distrust in medical providers. So again, I just feel like, like I said, maybe I just like reading these papers because I don’t know, it’s like watching them realize like, oh wait, this is actually a thing. Like, oh my goodness — at the end of the day, we could argue that medical providers have been underserving women for a very long time. And it’s like only now that we have social media that you can actually see publicly what the conversation is, because now this whole globe — this conversation is just so public — where you can look, you can go to X, you can go to Instagram, you can go to TikTok, and you can type in these hashtags and you can actually see publicly the conversation that’s happening. You can watch and get a sense of what is the kind of current pulse of these issues. What are actual women saying about it? How do people feel about it? What an interesting time, right?

And this dissatisfaction has been happening for a very long time. No one was listening. It wasn’t until we had social media to publicly talk about this stuff and connect with other people who were having the same issues and compare notes like, “Well, I was told this. Well, I was told that. Well, I tried this and it didn’t work. What did you try?” So, now we have this whole conversation and I think that it is certainly changing and shifting. And I think that because there are issues — we all kind of know, I feel like a lot of us know that there’s issues. We know that anyone can post a page, we know that people can just say whatever they want. So I think there is a trend for those of us who do know, who are grown-ups and we’re looking legitimately for information — we’re looking to find actual valid sources, right? We’re looking for evidence-based information. We’re looking for practitioners who do have legitimate experience, training, knowledge in these areas. And so I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we have this public forum for discussion around these topics. I just think, like I said, it’s definitely a buyer-beware situation. We have to be very discerning about what types of information that we are consuming and we really should be looking at who we’re consuming that information from and doing our due diligence to the best of our possibility.

So it is interesting, like I said, that they did kind of look for — is there a conflict of interest? Is this person selling something? Is their content related to what they’re selling? And could that influence how they’re talking about it? I do think that that’s a really important question and I feel like that’s something we can certainly take from this research paper where it’s not a nothing burger to say like who’s selling what and how do they benefit from posting the type of content that they do if they do have something that they’re selling that’s related to their content. How is that affecting what they’re saying? So certainly, buyer-beware situation.

So, one thing that I did find interesting is that the researchers did kind of indirectly make some suggestions because they were saying that again I felt like they were painting everything with a very broad brush. I felt like it was like if they didn’t say use the pill and metformin and go to your doctor that everything else was misinformation. So they basically labeled like any discussion of supplements as unscientific and like misinformation. And I find that interesting because there’s a lot of research on a variety of different supplements related to PCOS. I mean, in Real Food for Fertility, Lily and I go through the research essentially, we share a variety of specific evidence-based interventions that have had clinical trials and double-blind placebo — like the gold standard of clinical trials. So there’s a lot of research on a variety of different supplements as well.

So I feel like again, we have to be discerning. And the one thing I did notice is that they’re kind of saying like if it’s not exactly this kind of medical — do these two things, right, is what we have to offer — then the rest of it is all misinformation. So they did talk about — well, none of these platforms are putting misinformation labels on these posts and they’re not warning the users about the content. So I feel like that potentially gives us some insight into where they might be wanting to go with this.

And I also — one of their recommendations for the kind of healthcare providers — like so they’re giving a call to action for doctors and other healthcare professionals to leverage social media, because they basically want to counter the kind of wild west of people who are sharing content freely, so that they’re putting their content out there. And so what they say is furthermore providers and healthcare communicators can leverage social media to amplify evidence-based information about PCOS in a space where medical experts are conspicuously underrepresented. So I think that — I mean, I’ve already seen it. There’s been an explosion. It was very different 10 years ago. 10 years ago the internet was a place where people were seeking alternative information and there was a lot of alternative voices in that space. And as of late, I’ve noticed a significant shift towards more conventional medical professionals utilizing social media to spread the conventional medical information. And so it’s very interesting to watch because there was a time when the internet was where you went because your doctor wasn’t necessarily listening to you and that kind of thing. But now the medical doctors who are basically saying — I’m not going to put everyone into a box — but I think we’re going to see a lot more conventional medicine come online and hammer the party line more.

So hopefully it’ll be interesting to see because again we still have a lot of alternative voices online who are basically asking for more than the status quo. So what I would hope to see is the establishment respond to women’s actual concerns by providing what we’re asking for. Right? So by actually understanding that the reason that women are searching for additional information is because when you tell us that the only thing I can do for my irregular cycle is take the pill — that’s not what I want. Like that’s just for some women that’s fine but like maybe for me that’s not what I’m looking for. So that’s why I’m looking for an alternative. So if we have conventional medical professionals who come online just to say what the women are hearing in their doctor’s offices over and over again, I feel like maybe you’re not hearing me still, but now you’re just doing it online too. But we’ll see what happens.

I’m just kind of sharing my honest thoughts on this as I break down this paper, because certainly this paper is very much saying like okay we need more people online telling women the party line, telling women to use the pill or metformin, and this is how we resolve PCOS. But you know at the end of the day they do say to amplify evidence-based information. So I just hope that when they say that they mean it, and they mean evidence-based information, because all of the evidence-based information is not metformin birth control. There’s a lot of evidence-based information on PCOS that is related to specific nutrient deficiencies that are associated with it, specific aspects of the condition and ways that we can go about improving the inflammation, improving insulin sensitivity, improving some of the symptoms through dietary changes and a variety of kind of specific interventions — again, evidence-based. There’s a lot of research on these things.

So my hope is that they’re not just painting a brush that says everything that goes outside of our conventional model is just automatically misinformation. I’m hoping that when they say they are wanting people to publish evidence-based information, that they are actually including evidence-based information about alternatives to oral contraceptives or alternatives to metformin for those who are just not aligned with that approach.

So one last thing that I’ll talk about is they did have a summary — so in the paper they had a summary of some of the different posts or some of the different things. One of the things that they found was that there was a lot of discussion on the social media channels specifically about weight. So weight loss, strategies for weight loss, diets around weight loss, solutions to acne, skin care products, hirsutism, right? Like hair care management, whether it was tools for hair removal or those types of things. There was a lot of discussions around fertility, conception, all of those kinds of things. And then there was a lot of posts related to hair loss, a lot of posts related to different supplements and things like that.

And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because if you think about kind of the picture of PCOS — well, what are some of the concerns? The concerns are often related to insulin resistance, which can be associated with weight gain. So many women with PCOS may be asking questions about, well, what have you done to lose weight? What is the right diet for PCOS? If you’re dealing with some of the symptoms related to having excess androgens — so high androgens — well, what did you do for your acne? What did you do for your hair growth? What did you do for these kinds of things? If you’re having irregular cycles and you’re trying to conceive, well, what did you do for that? How did you control the cycles?

So I feel like everything that they found does reflect — it makes sense that women are asking these questions because these are some of the common issues related to PCOS. I mean, they did point out that there was, like I said, a lot of posts related to different supplements where the individuals kind of promoting said supplements may be getting a kickback or maybe having some sort of financial incentive to talk about these types of things.

But overall, they did mention certain posts about contraceptives. And so they gave an example of a post — and they say a video that claims that the birth control just masked my symptoms. So again, I feel like they’re portraying things with a very broad brush and in a very negative light. Hormonal contraceptives do mask symptoms. They don’t resolve PCOS. PCOS is a very complex condition. It is a metabolic condition. And like I said, it’s often associated with insulin resistance, elevated androgen levels. It’s associated with disrupted ovulation, with disrupted hormone, with disrupted menstrual cycle parameters.

And so when you give someone the oral contraceptive that just suppresses ovulation and gives them a regular withdrawal bleed — and because of the way oral contraceptives work, it does significantly reduce androgen production, because when you shut down the ovaries, all of a sudden you’re making way less testosterone as well as estrogen and progesterone, your natural estrogen and progesterone. And it also increases our production of sex hormone binding globulin, which also reduces free testosterone levels. So yes, like in terms of symptom management — your period, well you don’t have periods anymore but you have regular bleeds now, regular withdrawal bleeds. For some women it can improve the testosterone-related side effects like the acne and the hair growth. For some women it doesn’t magically fix it for everybody, but some women may see a relief in some of those types of symptoms. But ultimately it is not actually resolving this problem and certainly is not alerting these women to the metabolic issues that could still be going on, and certainly is not helping them to learn how to manage their insulin sensitivity and to manage their macro consumption to ensure that they’re optimizing the way that their body is taking in these nutrients.

So I think a valid conversation to be had about the limitations of oral contraceptives and for many women, symptom management — masking symptoms with drugs — isn’t necessarily their first port of call.

Anyways, I think that it’s just super interesting to see these types of papers come out and how they’re looking at these issues. And so, just to bring it all home — I mean, what this paper is telling us is that women are obviously looking for answers. And I feel like the medical establishment is now scrambling to figure out this problem from their perspective. They perceive this to be a problem because for probably a hundred years the medical establishment kind of had control over this conversation. And now that we can all just go to these social platforms and talk openly about whatever we want, then all of a sudden they are no longer controlling that narrative. And I feel like these types of papers are coming out because they’re realizing it. They’ve lost control of the narrative and now they need to run back in and take it back.

Because if all these women keep going to social media and finding other ways to solve their problems, then it’s really going to have a negative impact on their bottom line, right? If women start to be doubtful of the effectiveness of the pill to solve their PCOS, then fewer women may jump on the pill. Many women might start rejecting it. Many women might start looking in alternative ways. And ultimately that does have the potential to reduce their bottom line, to lower the amount of revenue, billions of dollars, that they’re getting from these drugs.

Certainly there are implications for this. I also have said before that the more women that are learning about these things, it means that the more women are coming into their doctor’s offices and asking different kinds of questions and rejecting some of the suggestions that are being provided or asking about alternatives and things like that. So I feel like on the front line, doctors are starting to see more of this. And again, it’s kind of that state of alarm of like, wait a minute — all of a sudden now, instead of me just going into the office and telling like you tell me that you have regular cycles and me telling you that I’m going to give you a prescription for the pill and you saying thank you and leaving. All of a sudden now my five-minute appointment is turning into 10, 15 because you’re telling me that you don’t want the pill and I’m having to convince you that no, no, no, the pill is the best option because that was how I was trained and you’re asking me about all these alternatives. But again, maybe the doctor or the healthcare provider — that’s not something that they were planning to talk about or trained to talk about.

So I can see that potentially being an issue, especially if you’re seeing a growing number of patients who are asking for alternatives that maybe you were not even trained in and based on your information and knowledge you don’t even think they’re effective, and it’s kind of like, why are we even talking about this when you could just go on metformin?

So I think part of the reason that we’re seeing more of these types of papers is because these medical professionals are now being faced with all of it — the internet is here, and the social platforms are here, and your patients are hearing information from alternative sources. And so how do you manage that?

So again, one of the themes I saw in this paper was a very broad stroke view of this. So everything from the medical system: good. Everything that is not specifically stating the oral contraceptive pill or metformin: bad. And I do challenge that. I think that this is just another example of how we’re not listening to women. So if anything comes from this discussion, this whole situation highlights a need. Women are looking for support and women are tired of going to their healthcare providers and being ignored. We’re tired of being in a system where it’s so paternal that I’m telling you I have this problem. You’re telling me this is the solution. First of all — what? How are you telling me that I have to do anything? And then if I say, “Well, I don’t think that solution is going to work for me, I want an alternative.” If you’re automatically putting down every alternative and saying that it’s just all of that kind of negative stuff without even knowing about it.

We have moved — I think we’re moving past this time when the doctors had full control of that narrative and they could just tell you what you have to do. I think we’re moving into a time where we want personalized care. We want to do what is evidence-based, but we want to take that targeted approach that is based on what I want, right? That is going to meet my needs. And it doesn’t mean that it’s never medication. Obviously, it doesn’t mean that we need to reject every medical solution that is provided. But we are at a time when it should be an a la carte menu here. You can’t just give me a set meal.

I want to be able to decide if I use birth control. I want to be able to decide for how long and why I’m using it, how I’m using it, what type. And I want to have full information disclosure about the side effects. I want to be able to track and know what all the side effects are so that if I do experience a negative one, I can come off of it or try something different. I want to be more of an active participant in my care. I want to know what’s going on. I want you to tell me if you’re recommending something. I want to know what it’s going to do to me. I want to know even if the chances of whatever negative thing happening are slim so that I can make an informed decision. And I want to know what the alternatives are because maybe I want health. Maybe now I don’t just want to get rid of the symptoms. Maybe I want to work towards resolving these root cause issues and getting to the point that I can have regular cycles without the drugs.

What if I can change my diet and take some supplements that help to sensitize my body to insulin that are evidence-based, and I can track my cycle to see what’s going on, and what if over time I can actually resolve this issue that I’m having without the intervention of drugs, right? These things are possible. We live in an amazing time where we have so much evidence to draw from. So there would have been a time when that result may have been very difficult. But now with a little effort, knowledge, support from a knowledgeable professional who can help to guide you through that process, we have got the research at our fingertips that we can draw from. It’s very possible to achieve some of these outcomes that we couldn’t have achieved 30, 40 years ago. We just didn’t have the information. We didn’t have access to the information. There wasn’t as many resources. There wasn’t the social media channels. We couldn’t share information as freely as we can now.

So I just — yeah, I feel like from my perspective, a paper like this is showing that they’ve lost the plot. They’re kind of out of touch and they’re trying to scrape back into the conversation. But like I said, if this is inspiring medical professionals who are really set in the conventional approach to just continue to ram that down our throats, then we’re going to have a problem. I hope — what I hope is that all of the realization that all these women are dissatisfied and we’re having all these different conversations, my hope is that it actually changes how medicine is done and changes it in a way that actually takes our concerns into consideration, actually listens to what we have to say and provides services that are in line with what we’re looking for, which is we want to feel better, we want to be better, right? All the things.

So, if you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can find the show notes, you can find the research paper that I went through today over at fertilityfriday.com/581. And with that said, I hope you have a wonderful weekend whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.