Hi, I’m Clare! Let me share (part of) my Women’s Health journey!
I know I am vehement about women’s health and equality, and I also know that is alienating for women people who believe that pushing for equality for women is the same thing as hating men.
It’s not, by the way. Equality is about liftin women up to the standard of men, not about bringing men down to the standards of women. However i thought that today I would share with you why it matters to me so much.
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- I was an Australian Sailing athlete, at the NSW Institute of Sport, from 2002 to 2005. I had the best coaches in the world, yet i still developed preventable pelvic dysfunctions by the time i was 24 years old. Depending on the sport, athletes have 2-3x the risk of developing pelvic dysfunctions than the general populations.
- I became a personal trainer in 2001, and received zero education in female physiology, including hormone cycles. This meant i trained women like I’d been taught, and many of them got injured, disillusioned, and dropped out. I didn’t have access to courses in female physiology until 2020, and by then I had already written my own (although I still participated in everything I could get my hands on!).
- I have had two children, the second of which triggered an immune dysfunction (i didn’t even know that was possible), and i developed a tumour the size of a grapefruit! It weighed half a kilo and rested on my bladder, exacerbating my pelvic dysfunctions. As a treatment I’ve had a bowel resection, removing the tumour and shortening my bowels, and as a happy side effect, triggering a gluten intolerance and an autoimmune disease. I didn’t know that was possible either!
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Women may be living longer (although if you take out the deaths by risk-taking for young men it’s not significantly longer), but they’re living in significantly reduced health. None of the things that have happened to me are cause-and-effect, however they have contributed to the environment where i developed these conditions – all before i was 40!
Sadly, my story isn’t unique. I also was brought up in an active family, with plenty of fruit and vegetables, all of which should have reduced my risk. Other women aren’t so lucky, and when they come to us for help, we need to do better in actually helping them!