Women's Health

The pelvic floor is a group of 14 muscles located at the bottom of your pelvis. These muscles support your bladder, rectum, and reproductive organs. Imagine a hammock or sling stretching across the bottom of your pelvis. That supportive hammock is your pelvic floor. When it's functioning well, you probably don't think about it. When it's not, you'll know.

Why aren't we talking about perimenopausal sexual dysfunction? Women's health has spent decades being the black sheep of medicine. Conditions affecting millions of women have often been dismissed, minimized, or simply ignored. Sexual health may be one of the best examples. Let's fix that.

PMOS can look very different from person to person, which is one reason it is often overlooked.

Let’s talk bones. Not the Halloween kind—the ones quietly holding you together while you scroll this. Osteoporosis is a condition where bone density decreases and the internal structure of bone weakens, increasing fracture risk. Osteopenia is the early stage of bone loss—the warning sign before osteoporosis develops. Osteoporosis affects 200 million people worldwide. Eighty percent of cases are women. After age 50, 1 in 2 women will have an osteoporosis-related fracture.

Burning mouth syndrome- an often overlooked condition of middle age

Estrogen. Let’s talk about the positive. More people in perimenopause are finally having their symptoms taken seriously and addressed. And in 2025, the FDA removed the black box warning on estrogen products—a pretty big shift. Back in 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative study linked hormone therapy to increased risks of heart attacks, strokes, and pulmonary embolism. That study changed practice overnight. But over the following decades, more nuanced research showed that those

“Hair” raising topic ahead. As estrogen decreases, its ratio to testosterone changes—and suddenly, hair changes enter the picture. There are two main things that can happen to hair in perimenopause and menopause. First: thinning or loss of hair on your head (we will talk about this in a future blog). Second: extra hair growth on your face. Bold and beautiful: A striking illustration captures the confident expression of a bald woman with vibrant red lips and a bright orange co

Ok. So it’s March. Colon Cancer Awareness Month. We’ve already talked about colonoscopies. We’ve also talked about some of the less glamorous side effects of anesthesia. Apparently, I have chosen this month to become your friendly neighborhood poop-and-propofol correspondent, so let’s move on to alternatives to the colonoscopy. Illustration of the human digestive system, highlighting the structure and arrangement of the intestines within the abdominal cavity. Image created by

Ok. It’s March. It’s Colon Cancer Awareness Month. Let’s get into this shit…literally. The colon (also known as the large intestine) is about 5 feet long. That’s almost as long as me! You may remember from high school biology that the colon is the organ that absorbs water and some vitamins from waste as it moves through your body. And at the end of that long, noble journey? Poop. (And yes, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people say “poo” instead of “poop.” I don’t know w

Sometime in my 40s, I started waking up with pain in my fingers. The joints ached, and I had to negotiate with them first thing in the morning before they would fully straighten. It wasn’t just my fingers. My back carried a dull, persistent ache when I got out of bed, and my ankles felt… less trustworthy. Those days of bounding down the stairs two steps at a time? Gone.Now I reached for the handrail and descended carefully — and, uncomfortably, images of my grandmother flashe

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that there are two cancer-preventing vaccines. The first is the Hepatitis B vaccine, which I discussed in a previous blog post (https://www.rx4trauma.com/post/preventing-cancer). The second is the human papillomavirus vaccine, or HPV vaccine. Illustration of a virus particle prominently displaying its spike proteins against a light blue background. Photo created by AI. There are over 100 types of human papillomavirus. Some cause benign warts, whil

GLP-1 receptor agonists are everywhere right now. They’re talked about on social media, in exam rooms, and at dinner tables. But they aren’t new. This class of medications was originally developed to treat diabetes. GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide-1. I like to think of it as a key. And the GLP-1 receptors? Those are the locks. These locks live all over the body—in the brain, the pancreas, the heart, and the gastrointestinal tract. When the key fits into the lock, a few

In the second half of 2024, the GLP-1 buzz was everywhere, and I started to quietly wonder if it was something I should consider. Almost immediately, doubt set in. Read more about GLP-1s here. https://www.rx4trauma.com/post/a-key-a-lock-and-a-shift-in-how-i-feel-about-obesity I had taken Ozempic back in 2022 and ended up in the emergency room. I’m fairly certain my husband declared—very firmly—that I should never take it again. On top of that, despite everything I’ve written

In the 1980s, the explanation for obesity was simple: overconsumption and inactivity. And to be fair, that wasn’t wrong. But it also wasn’t the whole story. Obesity is far more complex than “eat less, move more.” Most of the time, it’s the result of multiple factors working together—many of them outside a person’s control. Let’s talk about a few. A conceptual illustration highlighting the diverse factors contributing to obesity, featuring a silhouette of a pregnant woman surr

When I was in residency, I took care of a woman who had obesity.Notice I didn’t say she was obese. Semantics matter. A wide open mouth surrounded by speech bubbles featuring random gibberish words, illustrating playful and nonsensical communication. Obesity is a disease—just like hypertension, diabetes, or cancer. But it is not what defines a person. A person cannot be obese; they can have obesity. For far too long in this country, we’ve labeled people as “obese,” reducing th

Ever since I became a doctor, people have asked me the same questions again and again: What can I do to prevent cancer? What tests can I take for early detection? Should I get full-body scans to look for a possible tumor? Can I do blood tests to screen for every type of cancer? Illustration of a human skeletal system highlighting disease-affected areas, with visible redness indicating inflammation or disease in the shoulder region. (Image created through AI) So let me ask you

The other day, I was absently feeling my arm when I noticed a firmness along the upper, outer side. I pressed on it. Still there. I flexed my elbow, and the firmness became even more pronounced. What was this foreign mass in my body? Cancer? Abscess? Hematoma? Nope.It was my deltoid. A vibrant pop art style illustration of a confident woman displaying her deltoid muscle, showcasing strength and elegance with bold colors and striking features. When I was in elementary school a

Your adrenal glands are small but powerful organs that sit on top of your kidneys. They produce several important hormones: • Aldosterone, which helps regulate blood pressure • DHEA, which can be converted into sex hormones • Epinephrine and norepinephrine, your “fight-or-flight” hormones • Cortisol—the stress hormone most often mentioned when people talk about “adrenal fatigue” A colorful array of bubbling and steaming test tubes filled with vibrant chemicals, set

As we head into Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about what I’m truly grateful for. The list is long, but here are a few things that rise right to the top: 1) Hormone replacement therapy. The conversation around perimenopause is finally changing, and honestly, I think we can thank Gen X women for that. For a generation branded as apathetic, we sure banded together when it came to demanding better care. After 2002, menopause management basically evaporated. Women were tol

As I shared last week, I recently had an abnormal mammogram. When the nurse called to tell me that I needed a diagnostic mammogram, I let out that sigh—the deep, tired, “of course” kind of sigh. I’ve been blessed with dense breasts, and I’ve been considering a breast reduction, so this felt… inevitable. It wasn’t my first abnormal mammogram. But it still landed with weight. It’s not the mammogram itself that gets to me. The squishing? Fine—there’s plenty of tissue to work wit