Some Things You May Want to Know about Being Female

This is how I see it: you can learn to fix your own car but you won’t get far if you don’t understand how it works before you start fiddling about. You can, of course, take it to the garage and hand it over to a professional but then your entire trust is placed in that person, and you have very little part in the process. Wouldn’t it be better to know a bit about the inner workings of your car, so that if something seems a bit off, you can work out what it is likely to be, and decide what YOU can do to fix the problem? Then, if it still isn’t working properly, or if the problem is beyond your knowledge and skill to fix, you can take it to the garage with some idea and expectation of what will be done to your car in the hands of another person. You have some control over the situation: some involvement.

How is it any different when you have health issues?  

We are not just a mind being carried around in a fleshy container. It’s all part of the same system. Therefore, to a certain extent, our health is in our own hands. I believe we should all know a bit about what goes on inside our bodies so we can help them to function to their best abilities, and so we can identify problems when they occur.

Ok, so short of attending medical school or spending years learning about the human body, I think we can only ever assume to have a limited knowledge. But, to use another metaphor, it’s like the difference between visiting a foreign country with a limited knowledge of their language, or no knowledge at all. If you have no understanding of the language, you’ll feel pretty lost. If you have even just a little understanding, you’ll be able to talk to people, ask questions, read signposts and menus… in other words, to some extent, you’ll be OK!

When it comes to the female reproductive system, we never really get told that much about it. I think I might have had a total of five lessons at school where periods, sex and pregnancy were mentioned. I was lucky because my Mum taught me and my brother a little biology when we were very young, and as I wrote in a previous blog- I had a certain interest in how bodies work, so spent some time reading books on the subject as a child. But what I don’t know about it all massively outweighs what I do. When I began concentrating on my health recently, I decided the first thing to do would be to try and change that.

So here’s where I share what I found!

(I’m assuming you already know the names and the general functions of the body parts I’m talking about here. If not, there’s some great places online to learn about them… try  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_anatomy )