Women's Health: The Story We Were Sold

I've been researching health for years now. It started with my own health.

Years of struggling with illness, a healing process, and then an awakening.

What do I mean by awakening? Realizing that there's a huge amount I didn't know, and that this isn't by accident.

Behind every industry there are interests, and they usually come down to selling something to someone. There's no interest in us being healthy, because that isn't profitable. And if stories need to be told to keep us sick, or "healthy," those stories will be told.

When it comes to women, every woman knows the story of the pill. Every young girl hears from her gynecologist that if she wants to balance her hormones, she should start the pill early.

But what does it even mean to balance your hormones?

And can you really do that with a pill that shuts down the most important mechanism in nature?

And if she's already on it, how many years should she stay on the pill? What's the cost of taking it? Is it even worth it?

Everything I've done over the past few years grew out of women's health. Episode 9 (out of 140) of the Gut Feeling podcast was the first one that opened my eyes to how lacking the information is that women have about their own health.

From there we went on to do more episodes, all of them with Karin Kidar, who is also a meaningful part of this course. But the episodes didn't get the job done. I kept getting, and still get, dozens of messages a week from women with questions about issues tied specifically to women's health.

Low energy, menstrual pain, irregular periods, periods that wreck their quality of life, polycystic ovaries, endometriosis, a weak immune system, digestive problems, trouble getting pregnant, questions about fertility treatments, about how to improve fertility naturally, vaccines, HPV. If they're already on the pill, how many years should they take it? What's the cost of taking it? Is it even worth it? Should they stop? And on and on.

For most of these I didn't have an answer.

And it's all connected to the menstrual cycle and to hormonal imbalance, as I learned in the course.

So why are there such gaps between the knowledge of the ancient medicines and the knowledge of modern medicine?

It turns out that Western medicine is built entirely on the male body, and the only way doctors know how to help women with women's issues, cycles, and hormones, basically comes down to one thing for a woman: the pill, synthetic hormones, vaccines, and painkillers.

So I built this course, with a female producer who is my partner in this work, and three brilliant practitioners. Karin Kidar, who treats women with Chinese medicine and acupuncture; Asina Arder, who treats people with Japanese and Chinese medicine, Japanese acupuncture, and herbal medicine; and Lital Simon, who practices and teaches Indian medicine, Ayurveda. All three bring knowledge to this course that doesn't reach people through any other channel.

The ancient medicines of the East have passed down knowledge from generation to generation for 5,000 years, and it deals mainly with maintaining health and preventing illness, not managing symptoms. These medicines, and the women who make this wisdom and their own life experience accessible, offer an entire worldview about what femininity is, what women's health is, why the menstrual cycle is far more important than any of us believe, and what threw all of it out of balance.

Everyone deserves to feel good.

Everyone deserves to be healthy.

Everyone deserves to know who they are.

Everyone deserves to experience the full potential of being a woman.

For years they sold us a story.

It's supposed to hurt, it's embarrassing, you should hide it, don't talk about it, there's nothing to be done. They handed out pathologies, diagnoses, invasive tests, and prescriptions.

As long as we don't feel.

They turned women into the underdog, the burdensome figure, the one who has something bothering her every month, at work, in her relationship, at home. That time of the month.

And in the middle of all of this, everyone forgot, and she forgot too, her own power. She loses her identity, she blends in, she doesn't want to be a bother, she suppresses, she keeps a blank face, she smiles.

Without her, none of us would be here.

Without her knowing who she is, without all of us understanding who she is, none of what happens here has any meaning.

Meaning isn't something that comes from the things our culture dictated to us. Meaning comes from creating life, from feeling, from a strong sense of identity.

This course is for you.

It's a course every woman has to watch, and so does every father, every brother, and every partner.

A women's health course.