WhatsApp communities are becoming sanctuaries for women’s health

I received a diagnosis of grade four to 28 years old endometriosis and I had a hysterectomy at 39 years old. Although the years quickly pass through an IVF mist, surgeries and hospitalizations, I remember the nights that I spent in pain, traveling internet for new information, hungry for shared experience. With hindsight, I am convinced that if I had a support group, I may have found more precise information or the good surgeon, which could have led to a different result. Or, at the very least, I would have known that I did not imagine the pain.

“The error that doctors have made and continue to make is to imagine that an illness in the patient’s head must therefore, in a way, be a manufacture on which the patient has control,” writes Elizabeth commensurate in his book Everything in his head: the truth and the first drugs taught us about the body of women and why it is important today. For this reason, it is common for women to be diagnosed with years later as men for the same disease.

Women’s health is a funny business. While science is advancing towards the space era, the prioritization of the health of women still leaves something to be desired. A study by McKinsey in 2020 revealed that only one percent of all health care was invested in specific conditions for women. For years, conversations around menstruation and menopause have been considered taboo. But while we start to speak and denigrate subjects of false layers, IVF procedures and specific diseases for women, we have that the best way to get information is via other women.

Rachel Kurien, a reflexologist trained in Mumbai, found that many of his clients struggled in the same way that she was during menopause. “I helped them with my own research and I thought, why not do a group and pool our resources instead of living in silos,” she said. Its WhatsApp community, Menopausal Mumbai, has more than 300 members and pings regularly with suggestions and updates, whether it is the best doctor for HRT or which medicinal mushrooms can help with hot flashes. “There are women who publish on the group in tears because doctors paint their symptoms and say that it has nothing to do with menopause.” According to his own experience, Kurian suffered from a continuous tear of the skin in his labial area but was not diagnosed. “After reading, I came across the term GSM (genitarian syndrome of menopause) and I realized that it was what I had, and I have since helped others recognize this too.”