she has created a go-to manual that also acts as an understanding of our minds as well as our bodies - how hormones can affect your self-belief, anxiety levels, confidence and beyond. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) show that childhood trauma, neglect and structural oppressions 'come out' in later life not just in the form of mental distress like anxiety or depression, but in chronic physical inflammation, bodies stuck in high alert mode.

Women presenting at hospitals with pain are not only given fewer painkillers than men but are often offered sedatives instead (because we’re easier when we’re quieter). How bizarre that it took having fertility treatment to learn about myself, an adult woman who had been menstruating for nearly twenty years. As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself" - Bessel Van Der Kolk in The body keeps the score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. During this gruelling process, I learned more from the doctors and nurses about what actually happens during the menstrual cycle, how my ovaries and hormones work, than I think I ever had before in my life.HORMONAL explores everything from contraception to PMS, in relation to anxiety, depression and taboos about hysteria and the ‘hormonal’ woman. We can link women’s biology as a source of oppression throughout history, and pejorative terms like ‘hysterical’, to the modern- day experience of women – both individual and collective – in so many ways. During our period (but also before) prostaglandins in the womb trigger muscle contractions as the lining gets ready to break down and then begins the process. Morgan rigorously investigates the modern landscape of women and health, from contraception to PMS, anxiety and depression, examining the relationship between our bodies and what goes on inside them over the course of our reproductive lives, our biochemistry, and our psychological wellbeing. We non- starters used to ask each other how bad it could be, because we all knew what a stomach ache felt like.

To do this they injected an iodine- containing dye into my womb to see if it came out the ends of both fallopian tubes. The truth is that because the science is still inexact when it comes to our hormones, there is no reliably clear cut information available.This is the kind of information that would have been useful to learn as a teen, but I’ll take learning it in my 30s over never. It's easy to feel frustrated by books about it when your own is proving difficult to manage in the face of pandemic, climate emergency, resurgent fascism, surveillance capitalism, grotesque wealth inequality, etc, etc. Lots of prostaglandins generally means lots of pain and because they also stimulate the contracting of our gut muscles, can cause bowel changes. We are protecting no one by pretending that we don’t bleed; that our bodies, in preparing for and bearing children, don’t make a mess.