Revolution: Women’s Health

I just got off the phone with a group of bloggers, (Our Bodies, Our Blog, Women 4 Hope (Catherine also blogs at BlogHer, Well Soul, Women’s Health News), Cynthia from Don’t Gel Too Soon (and Revolution Health) and Sherry Marts, PHD from the Society for Women’s Health Research. The phone call was organized as part of the Revolution Health Online Health Fair. You should click that link and then roll your mouse over the little computer icons until you find a topic (or multiple topics) that interest you. Every time you click into a topic (once per day per person) Revolution Health will donate money to the organization featured in the Online Health Fair. So click. Or better yet, click the Society for Women’s Health Research icon (it’s at the bottom, they’re alphabetical) and support their work.

Now, about the phone call. Interesting stuff and I was lucky enough to be the first blogger to ask questions and lucked into getting 3 questions instead of just 2. Yes I am a lucky woman. (Too bad people don’t really win the lottery or I’d be sooo in there, wouldn’t I? heh)

My first question was about women being prescribed medications that may not (probably not) have been tested ON women before they were approved. It wasn’t until like 1993 that the FDA mandated drugs be tested ON women. So those drugs you’re taking… well… you figure it out.

My next question was more complicated and had to do with women who talk about having more chronic pain and more auto-immune flares at certain points in their menstrual cycle – and not finding research that indicates this DOES happen – and not being able to find doctors who believe it happens – and not getting specialized pain treatment because it does happen.

Last but not least, I asked about HIV/AIDS drug testing being done on women. We’re doing such a good job of preventing HIV/AIDS in gay men but in minority women it’s getting to be a very serious problem – and the HIV/AIDS drugs have not been well tested (if at all) on women because they’ve been traditionally a hard group to study (in the early years of drug treatment testing, the women who contracted HIV tended to be sex workers, IV drug users – folks hard to keep track of).

The other bloggers in the group asked questions about hormone replacement, funding for women’s health and HPV. A transcript and/or audio cast of the event will be available some time tomorrow and I’ll link it in this post when it’s up – and click here to listen.

Now go click the Revolution Health Online Health Fair icons today and for the next five days so Revolution Health can donate some of their “hard earned money” to your favorite cause(s).