Hormonal: Una guía esencial sobre el cuerpo, la salud mental y por qué debemos ser escuchadas

by Eleanor Morgan, Silvia Alemany (translator)

Hormonal is a familiar label for any woman exhibiting less than maximum self-control. Eleanor Morgan dismantles the stubborn taboos that exist surrounding women and their health-rejecting the idea that female bodies are mysterious, unknowable, and most importantly, in need of constant surveillance lest they go awry. 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.

With refreshing frankness, Morgan connects the historical stigma of the 'hysterical' woman to the edicts of the medical establishment, the #MeToo movement and more, detailing how women's pain is still systematically dismissed and coded by men. She advocates for more openness and more questioning of the systems that dictate how women inhabit their bodies and the language we use to talk about ourselves, examining why so much stigma and misinformation still exists and how we can learn to accept ourselves as we are.


'A powerful and beautifully written account of Morgan's experiences with anxiety and depression . . . courageous and compelling' Guardian on Anxiety for Beginners

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Science, Health, Mental Health, Psychology, Womens

320 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2023

About the author

Eleanor Morgan has written for a variety of publications including The Guardian, Times, Independent, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, The Believer and others. She also worked as a senior editor at Vice UK. Eleanor is the author of the book Anxiety for Beginners: A Personal Investigation. She is currently training to be a psychologist.

Reviews

[Sadhbh O'Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only criticism of this deeply researched and informative book is that there is no acknowledgement that it is written entirely for and about cis women and their experience. This isn’t to say that it isn’t important ! I’m a cis woman who learned so much about how I interpret my own mind and pain and mental health from this book, but I think that it does the book a disservice to not at least acknowledge in the beginning that this is about cis women only. The relationship trans women, trans men and non binary people will have with hormones is worth a book in itself so it’s not that I think it should have been covered extensively in this book - but talking about womanhood solely in terms of uterine reproductive systems is biological essentialism which this book otherwise demonstrates to be a sweeping generalisation of human experience! Even a quick disclaimer at the beginning would have helped.

Other than that I really really enjoyed this book. I mention the above not to necessarily dismiss it because I think it would be such a great and educational read for so many, but because I think it may be dismissed for not doing so. Which would be a huge shame.

[Jenny Love · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a fantastic book! Well research and wholly evidence-based, Morgan presents a variety of research in an interesting and digestible way. Essential reading for anyone with, or living closely with someone who experiences, a menstrual cycle. Empowering, enlightening and validating I cannot recommend this book enough.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked Hormonal: A Conversation About Women's Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard up in the library without realising that I'd read another book by Eleanor Morgan in 2018: Anxiety for Beginners: A Personal Investigation. That I found really powerful, relatable, and somewhat comforting. My response to Hormonal: A Conversation About Women's Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard was much more ambivalent. I honestly cannot tell to what extent that reflects the differences between the books and to what extent it reflects how I've changed in the past four years. Both include a combination of Morgan's personal experiences and broader material contextualising mental illness and, in the case of Hormonal: A Conversation About Women's Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard, reproductive health. The writing style is highly engaging; I read both in a single sitting. With Anxiety for Beginners: A Personal Investigation, I was pleased to find experiences of anxiety similar to my own described so well and found the reflections on recovery hopeful. The contextual material was enlightening too. Since then, though, I've read and thought a lot more about mental health. Consequently, I found the discussion of women's mental health in history within Hormonal: A Conversation About Women's Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard rather superficial compared with, say, Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors. It didn't seem inaccurate, nor would I expect a detailed history in a book focused on the author's experience, but I didn't learn from it to the same extent as from Anxiety for Beginners: A Personal Investigation.

My initial reason for reading Hormonal: A Conversation About Women's Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard was my tiresome periods, same rationale as for the other book about menstruation I've come across, Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You. Both left me feeling alarmed that my periods could be so much worse and unencouraged about treatments for period-related unwellness. While honest, this conclusion is a real downer:

When I first went to my GP to talk about managing my PMS, I suppose I was looking for a panacea. I just couldn't reckon with the idea that I might slip into that way of feeling every month until the menopause. That's a lot of days. Every month I would forget and then: woompf. Then I'd think, I have to do something about this. Once I started tracking my cycle with the Clue app, being able to predict when I might feel crap, or, looking at it when I am feeling crap, being able to see that I'm ovulating or entering the PMS phase, was a big help. It took away some of the 'from nowhere' feelings and made me feel more like a body of rhythms. I have tried some other strategies too, but never found my panacea because no such thing exists.

I do not find tracking my periods (on paper not an app) has really helped. Knowing why I feel shit doesn't make me feel better, it just makes me resentful. Aside from all the physical symptoms, the idea that the sadness and anhedonia of PMS are my underlying moods, merely revealed by hormones, is not something I've reconciled myself to. It could well be true, but I'd much rather it wasn't. I found Morgan's personal investigation of treatments for PMS and private health professionals offering them to be very interesting, while still dispiriting. She discusses a theory that digestive problems contribute to PMS because the gut's microbiome has a role in metabolising oestrogen. After an expensive consultation with a clinical nutritionist, she finds that reducing her wheat intake and eating more fish and fermented foods helps a bit. I have struggled with eating for my entire life, so this filled me with dread. Very likely I'd feel better in general if I ate more and healthier food - would that it were so simple for me to do so!

As the tone of this review probably suggests, my current attitude to mental health is relevant to how I received Hormonal: A Conversation About Women's Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard. 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. That aside, Morgan covers a lot of ground on medical sexism, gendered mental health diagnoses, reproductive illness, and wellness, inevitably rather quickly. I found all this very readable while wishing for more depth. The personal memoir elements are great, though. Notably, I very much appreciated her comments on Killing Eve (spoiler warning for the finale).

One of the funniest things about the show is that you find often find yourself wanting to be, kiss, or at least admire Villanelle, in spite of all the throat-slitting, shooting, and watching-people's-last-breaths-with-a-child-like-smile-on-your-face stuff. [...]

[Fiona Shaw who plays Carolyn says] "It's fantastic to have an antiheroine like Villanelle, doing all the things you might think, but never dare to do. And she succeeds! That's really exciting. It's like liking the devil, isn't it? But there's no consequence to it. She always comes out fine, and everyone dies. I think it's playful, and really anarchic.

Exactly! That's why Villanelle's sudden death at the end undermined the whole appeal of the show. I remain bitter about it.

[Tilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

This book was gifted in exchange for an honest review.

Eleanor Morgan's "Hormonal" is "a conversation about women's bodies, mental health and why we need to be heard". It is an intelligent, witty and informative read and I found myself bursting out in laughter as well as holding back the tears.

As a woman that has suffered from chronic illness, including endometriosis for 15 years, this book was always going to speak to me. What surprised me was how much I learned about a subject that I thought I knew well. 
There is in-depth information on the menstrual cycle, history of the physical and mental health of women, different illnesses and conditions along with a unique look into the author's own journey. I learnt a great deal...I have suffered with severe menstrual cramps and endometriosis pain since my periods began, how is it that I never knew the biological cause of them until now?! I have always been shocked at the way I and many other women have been treated by the medical community. Seeing the statistics in this book made my blood boil. "Women's pain - physical or emotional; as if the two can be extricate - has been minimised and dismissed for centuries". Morgan tells us about studies that show how doctors under-treat female patients. In emergency departments worldwide, women are a shocking "13 to 25% less likely to be given opiate painkillers". Our pain is simply not believed. This information would have floored me if I hadn't lived through it over and over again the last 15 years.
This book is a 5 star read and in my opinion every woman needs to read it, especially women with endometriosis, PCOS, PMS and other gynaecological or hormone related conditions. 
As Morgan states, "there is power in knowing ourselves better" and there is also power in knowing how badly women worldwide are being medically failed.

[Alma Ha · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing read. It just didn't deliver enough pop medical knowledge I hoped. Instead, at some points it looked like a couple of google reviews of different clinics stringed together. Stylistically, some passages read like a paper written in high school.

[Оленка Чередниченко · Rating 4 out of 5]

Насправді трошки розчарувала книга, вона не виправдала моїх очікувань. Чомусь мені здавалося, що авторка буде науково, але доступно розповідати про гормони й жіноче здоров'я, а по факту, вся "науковість" закінчилася десь на половині книги. Далі суто досвід письменниці й проблеми ґендерної дискримінації. Безумовно, про це потрібно говорити, і це важливо, але це не те, що я хотіла прочитати.
В цілому, книга непогана, і я б радила ознайомитися з нею багатьом жінкам, які взагалі не знають, які працює їхнє тіло.
Окрема подяка дизайнеркам і редакторам книги. "Міт", "лікарка" і "авдиторія" змушували мене тішитися :)

[Nele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful read. I would have gotten more out of it if I read this like a year or 2 earlier.

I have been on a journey myself with my hormones and my menstrual cycle. And I do recommend to every woman to get to know your cycle.
Hormones just affect us in so many ways. We shouldn't just accept our pain and our suffering.
And knowledge is power.

Personally, knowing where I am in my cycle, has had a big impact on my mental health. Heck, this knowledge is one of the reasons why I gave my partner a second chance when I started dating him.
My hormones (or rather drop in hormones) gave me the ick. Instead of focusing on the good that was there.
Knowing I'm PMS'ing, gives me the insight to not pick fights over trivial things.
Of course you are not a doormat. But if it didn't bother you 2 weeks ago that he left his socks on the floor, why would you bite his head off now?

[Hannah Kentridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

i want to recommend this to everyone. the chapter called Pain made me cry. this book made me angry but it was so funny and i learned so much.

I’ve been suffering from awful periods and generally feeling like something is wrong with me for YEARS and I don’t know why i haven’t been spending more time doing my own research rather than relying solely on the 15 minute long doctors appointments i have however many times a year.
Next i’m going to read “How the pill changes everything”. going to keep seeing if i can get an endometriosis diagnosis, keep trying the pills i’m on, but maybe also will try to change my diet a bit. i think i will go back through this book with a highlighter and a pencil.

the only thing about the book is that it’s very cis woman focused - it could have benefited from even just a mention of the difficulties trans men have with reproductive healthcare & an acknowledgment that not all women menstruate and it’s not only women who do

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aside from the overuse of the currently trendy terms “speak her truth” and “gaslighting”, the author provides an interesting (and first for me) glimpse into the world of women’s bodies and the hormonal changes that happen not only monthly but across our lifetime - puberty, pregnancy, breastfeeding, peri-menopause and menopause.

Using a mixture of anecdotal and scientific references she paints a picture of what is likely happening internally (the research is very new in this space) from a a physiological and psychological perspective, how we are viewed by society and the medical system at large during these periods, and questions whether there may be much more to our understanding of female biology to-date (I reckon we are just at the tip of the iceberg).

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. Recommend a read.

[LoriO · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up. This was a solid meh for me. It was all over the place; it didn't keep my interest. There was too much simple biology and not enough of the stuff most of us had NOT already learned in school. Some of the topics she discussed are important and engaging, but I couldn't for the life of me understand why they were in here. This was more a collection of disparate essays than anything else. (Plus, I'm postmenopausal, and there was very little in here for me.)

Just one note: Goodreads claims there are no audiobook versions of this book, but there are. I got mine on Chirp and listened to it there, with the cover above. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so good. I would recommend any female to read. This book has a sound evidence base but is also written in a way that makes you feel like you are talking to a friend.

[Filipa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book to read for women (and men). Not an easy or light reading, but a reading that makes think about your relationship with yourself, and with women’s place in society, historically and currently.

This book is incredibly informative and has an expansive range. Yet I believe each person will react and interpret it differently in a very unique way.

I enjoyed the way the writer shares her story and journey, and uses it to link the various topics discussed.

Triggers: If writing about female medical procedures, female reproduction, and pain might upset you, I would advise some caution reading this book.

[Ozbernie]

I'm not going to give this book a rating as I'd rather just say it was a good resource book full of information, some of which was very confirming to me and other information that I am still not too sure about. Either way, books like this are both objective and can be very subjective too so I was able to take both parts and apply them to my journey and get rich insights into the author's journey which I really appreciated. I wish I had this kind of a resource in my teens and twenties when my journey of all this began. A big thank you to the author for all the work she put into this for us all.
There are some quotes and parts that I want to note:
THE CYCLE - a vital sign
"After an entire adult life spent negotiating with anxiety of varying colour and shape, along with studying the human mind, I know full well that the notion of there ever being an exact reason for a period of low mood or anxiety is an anathema. We are always reacting and adapting to the squally waves of life. Stressors, like demanding jobs, relationship issues, money worries and illness do funnily enough, cause stress, and our individual resilience - or vulnerability - is the product of many complex variables in our nature and nurture. But knowing that my biology is part of the picture, that a hormonal surge is a temporary thing, sometimes gives me a touchstone. When I look at my calendar I know I could feel a bit strange on those days. I also know that it will pass. This, over time has made me feel a bit more equipped"
DON'T BE SO SENSITIVE:
Quotes from Hannah Gadsby's 45minute stand up comedy special "Nanette" in June 2018:
"I get told to stop feeling sensitive" and awful lot. And it is always yelled. Which I find very insensitive" Gadsby continues in her set "Stop being so sensitive" I don't understand. Why is insensitivity something to strive for? I happen to know that my sensitivity is my strength. I know that. It's my sensitivity that's helped me navigate a very difficult path in life. So when somebody tells me to stop being sensitive, you know what? I feel a little bit like a nose being lectured by a fart. Not the problem!
I've genuinely lost count of the number of times in my life that I have witnessed noses being lectured by farts. Or been, the nose at the receiving end of the fart. I have been told that I am too sensitive my whole life. But if being sensitive means being the friend that people come to when it really matters, when they're falling off the floor with despair of their child, or sick or if they have been catastrophically hurt by someone, then it's a privilege.
Since I was a small child I have delighted in the details of a natural world: veins in the sand at low tide, the tiny silver bobbies and yellow cups in patches of lichen, the hot velvet of a horse's nose, the handsome redness of a rosehip, the baby's shoulder like fuzz on a fig leaf stem. In moments of real distress in my life, of which there have been a few, it has been the details of the bigger world around me, the riot of colour and life that exists and continues being what it is irrespective of what is happening in the world beneath my skull, that has brought me most comfort. I am a chronic noticer. Were I not so sensitive, I wonder if this would be the case. I don't care, really. I wouldn't change it.
PERSONALITY
Faith in the Myers-Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) is still unbending.
....used in countless industries and by many organisations worldwide
....developed by two housewives Katharine Cook Briggs and daughter Isabel Briggs Myers during World War 2 based on the theories of Carl Jung, their aim being to create a useful test that would help place women entering the workforce in jobs that best matched their personalities. It is the world's most widely administered "psychological" test estimated to be taken by millions each year.
....yet social scientists have been saying for decades that the MBTI has absolutely no evidential basis and is largely meaningless. It relies on binary choices (eg. introversion vs extraversion) whereas no one is exclusively one thing or the other - human beings don't work that way - it is widely simplistic and like horoscopes, mostly sticks to positive language. The MBTI doesn't conform to the basic standards that are expected of psychological tests. It's fun to take though which is undoubtedly part of the problem. .....the trouble is your MBTI can change over a matter of months, weeks, hours or minutes. If a person's "type" can change that quickly, four letters clearly offer very little insight into a person's character. However, the 'Eureka' moment people may experience when they've taken the test (I felt it the first time around) speaks of something important: how easily seduced we are by the idea of an ideal self. We are variable, highly complex and often unpredictable species. That we are complex and changeable by nature isn't something that always sits well with us. Like moths to a flame, we flock to easy answers and solutions. It's comfortable, makes us feel secure. The MBTI might seem to offer one of those easy answers, yet no binary test could ever capture the variability of human beings. However much we may want it to.
VALIDATION
There is no one size fits all treatment for this hormone-based disorder...different things work for different people....very often you won't know what will work until you try...
TRUTH SERUM
Clearly if a woman's premenstrual distress is such that she feels unable to function, she should in an ideal world be seeking and receiving dedicated healthcare and support. I wonder though, if there is something wider we should be asking about how as a society we frame what women say and do when they are anything other than sanguine, nurturing and polite? What if, as women, we could think about these emotional changes we experience in a different way? With PMS, could it be that we are saving up anger, frustration, our base need for affection, our tears and our ever-simmering sense of injustice for three weeks of the month? Then as our hormonal levels shift, could they be acting as a kind of 'truth serum' lubricating the passage of what we REALLY want to say or do? It's a radical idea and I quite like it. What if we feel, say and do during those times of the month when we are quick to say we are being irrational, needy or defensive is the most 'real' we are? Because the thing is that science surrounding whatever signalling changes happen in the emotional processing parts of our brain during the menstrual cycle is still imprecise. Could it be that, when the mantle of self-censorship drops and we are less caught up with fearing how we'll be seen, we're accessing all the historical oppression and in short bursts letting it go? All that so-called "excess" could just be truth? We need to try to do better as women to remind ourselves of the changeable beings we are by design; to accept that it is literally impossible to be a certain way all the time. We are not supposed to stay the same. Moods, too come and go. Anger can be a force for necessary change in our lives. If we continue to root the entire blueprint of our personality, what makes us us, in our reproductive system, we're neither being kind nor smart.

CONVERSION
Sometimes our bodies convert emotional pain into something else. Something tangible. It was Freud who proposed that the memory of trauma which a person cannot confront because it will cause too much distress can be 'converted into physical symptoms. Interestingly such cases are often referred to as functional neurological disorders (FND)
...In 2015 Neurologist, Suzanne O'Sullivan published a book titled " It's all in your head: True stories of Imaginary Illness' and account of her twenty years of experience helping to treat conditions that exist in the murk between physical and pyschological illness.
.."The body keeps the score - Bessel Van Der Kolk and "The shaking woman or A history of my nerves" - Siri Hustvedt deepened my wonder about the relationship between mind and body, feeding my ongoing inner question: can we really separate the two?
Most fascinating to me is when Hustvedt begins asking where illness or pain begins and she begins. 'When I shook, she writes, it didn't feel like me! She explores how problems in the mind like depression, anxiety or any other mental health problem, as well as neurological illnesses, so often feel like an invasion of SELF. She wonders how much her personality affects her seizures and how much her seizures affect her personality? Instead of saying 'I am cancer' she writes we say I have cancer, however do we say 'I'm bipolar' or 'I'm epileptic'. It's true. I say 'I'm anxious', I'm sad, or I'm tearful. I don't say I have anxiety, I have sadness, or I have tears. It is that 'I am' that I'm interested in when it comes to women's experiences of hormonal fluctuations, whether that's mont on month with the menstrual cycle during pregnancy, post postpartum or menopausal. We cannot ignore biology, but there is something important to consider in the way we talk to ourselves and others about how we feel and how that might affect our sense of ourselves. ....The language I use when describing the way I feel with PMS is almost always definitive: I am sad Not I feel sad at the moment, recognising that feeling as a wave of emotion that will wash in and eventually wash out.
Does it make sense to ever describe some conditions as purely physical or psychological?
...the author got to meet Hustvedt..We talk about how as women, we can possibly begin to separate hormone activity from the self. 'When I immersed myself in hormone studies, what I discovered, number one is how much we don't know, but secondly how the research is just not modelled in enough of a social way, she says. "It's very important to understand that we're not just dealing with a car engine. We've been very successful in Western medicine in treating heart disease and that's because the heart is like a pump. The machine model works pretty well for the heart function. I think it works for bones. After that everything else is just swimming because that reductive biomedical model of the body as a machine doesn't work. It doesn't work for the nervous system and it certainly doesn't work for hormones".
I ask Hustvedt what her personal theory of functional neurological disorders -often referred to as psychiatry's blind spot - is and how it might relate to the wider picture of how women's distress is interpreted and treated. "I think it's because of helplessness" she says. "There is a reason there are so many more women who have them in non combat situations; people who are not fighting in wars or trapped in trenches, and it's because of helplessness" In other words, what do soldiers after war have in common with women? There was a famous book called Shell Shock written by a physician and psychologies called C.S Meyers who wrote the first paper on traumatised soldiers. He understood shell shock as a form or hysteria that had affected all these men and was very clear that the officers did not suffer from hysteria, nearly as much as the soldiers. "It's about a lack of power. HELPLESSNESS".
FORMAL RECOGNITION
Dr Nick Panay (Consultant gynaecologist and Chairman of the National Association for Premenstrual Syndrome (NAPS) ...the NHS website links to info provided by Mind, which says"Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a very severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) which can cause many emotional & physical symptoms every month during the week or two before you start your period. It is sometimes referred to as severe PMS. Medical literature was, until quite recently, vague about what PMDD is & how to treat it. One of the problems being that from month to month a woman's premenstrual symptoms may vary in length or severity."No two cycles are ever completely identical" Panay tells me several times during our interview. Lots of debate about PMDD included in DSM-V (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) Its diagnostic thresholds have been lowered. PMS stress being used in court is an interesting & controversial subject. Should PMS be seen as a mitigating circumstance when criminal activity has happened? 1981 Sandie Smith barmaid London 30 convictions, defence argued that all crimes coincided with PMS phase & unless treated rendered her a raging animal each month. Same month Christine English - manslaughter case.
GABA
We don't exactly know what caused PMS, but cyclical ovarian activity and the effect of estradiol and progesterone on the neurotransmitters serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) appear to be key factors. GABA is made in the brain cells from glutamate, the most prominent neurotransmitter in the body, especially in the cerebral cortex, located in the super wrinkly, outer layer of the brain. This area is responsible for processing information from the five senses, as well as higher thought processes like speech & decision-making.
GABA is an amino acid that inhibits nerve transmission in the brain, calming nervous activity. Glutamate acts as an excitatory neurotransmitter and when bound to the adjacent cells, encourages them to "fire" and send a nerve impulse. GABA does the opposite and tells the cells not to 'fire' It is effectively our natural tranquilliser. Drugs such as benzodiazepines (Diazepam, Xanax, etc) work by increasing or imitating GABA's effect. As a health supplement, GABA is sold and promoted as a natural tranquilliser. It is also popular among body builders because there is some evidence to suggest that GABA increases human growth hormone (HGH) levels. There is evidence to suggest that low levels of GABA are associate with postpartum depression, although more research is needed.
Without GABA, nerve cells can fire too readily, too often. There is robust evidence to show that low GABA activity is associated with high levels of anxiety. We can use the example of caffeine to help understand the effect of GABA. Caffeine is known to rapidly increase glutamate levels, contributing to alertness. GABA doesn't get a chance to get it and do it's job. Remember the less GABA there is, the more excitable your brain is. Remember the last time you drank too much coffee and how you felt? That awful feeling is in crude terms, the sensation of glutamate in cruise control without the GABA brake pedal.

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: A BAD NAME FOR REAL SUFFERING
The reason many clinicians reject the BPD diagnosis, and why there is such a growing network of 'survivors' is because evidence shows that around 80 percent of people diagnosed with BPD remember: overwhelmingly applied to women - have a history of trauma.
....trauma survivors may have a block on memories of what happened to them in their early life, but the impact of physical, emotional or sexual abuse as a young personal can be profound and enduring. People who were sexually abused as a child often feel thy are to blame. That they are somehow stained. On a sub-conscious level they believe they should be punished. The quick-to-fly-off-the-handle-aspect of BPD, seemingly in relation to trivial things, can be conceptualised as a delayed expression of anger towards the person that caused them pain. Of course, not all trauma is physical or sexual in nature. Trauma strains our fibres. 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 have historically been conditioned to keep their pain and emotional excess contained. We often don't feel we can speak because when we do, we can be re-traumatised through damning language. The result is a body that constantly believe it needs to protect itself; over-alert and often in pain. Trauma moves through us with our blood.
"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.
We must insist on trauma-informed care which focuses on listening to and helping women on their own terms, rather than attaching a label which provokes hate and disdain from even psychiatric staff and has led many a woman to suicide.

THE WEIGHT OF TRAUMA
I was shocked to learn that , for many of these women, in that room with the psychologist was the first time they had disclosed past sexual, physical or emotional abuse.....I heard women describing childhoods spent in and out of care, sexual abuse within family settings, emotional neglect and violence. Many had mental health issues that they'd received patchy care for. I had not anticipated or considered there would be such a clear connection between historic trauma and disordered eating habits. But of course it makes sense.

DUE SCEPTICISM
Hormone-like substances called prostaglandins are made in every cell of the body and are released at the site of an injury to help with making a clot so the body can heal the injured tissue. They also cause blood vessels to contract, as well as muscle tissue, to stop blood loss. 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. Lots of prostaglandins generally means lots of pain and because they also stimulate the contracting of our gut muscles, can cause bowel changes. This is why we often get diarrhoea with period pain. In women, who have endometriosis, all the extra prostaglandins being released where the rogue womb like cells have grown can make other sites of pain in the body worse...same with disc injuries, etc.

FINALLY
The truth is that because the science is still inexact when it comes to our hormones, there is no reliably clear cut information available. If we feel sad, anxious and irritable before our period, it is not "just" our hormones making us feel that way. Life is so rarely black and white, it is shades of grey.
Our physical and mental selves are so interrelated in ways we can barely get our minds around. There may be times when we have more extreme hormonal fluctuations and really feel like there's a 'chemical' nature to our mood (I know I've felt this) but those may also be times when things are difficult in our lives anyway. A perfect storm.
How our bodies react to different levels of hormones may also be to do with how well we are at that particular time generally, both immunologically and psychologically. How we react to someone we feel is being an arse when we are premenstrual might just be because they really are being an arse. It might not be because we're hormonally unhinged.

[loucumailbeo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that looks at the intersection between female bodies, mental health and how women’s pain is minimised by the medical establishment.

This is a interesting book and was certainly anger making in parts, reading the examples of the ways female pain and women’s medical needs have been dismissed or overlooked. However, this book does have one factor which is a personal pet hate. That is assume a stance of research and facts, but then have a lot of first person narrative and light examples. There are a couple of instances where the author says that she googled xyz. However this is a small element of the book.

Overall, this is an interesting read and would be a good intro to the topic for anyone interested in these issues.

[Helen Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book hoping to find some clarity and understanding about my own hormones, and how I might help my body to work a little better. I was hoping for a clear, readable explanation of how my menstrual cycle is affected by fluctuations in my hormones. I didn't get that, but this is NOT due to this being a poor book. I thought it was easy to read and interesting, the problem is that the science of women's bodies is just not conclusive in many ways. There is so much that is not understood about how our bodies react to environmental stressors, and no way to predict how that will play out in our biological functions! Interesting book though not the book I was hoping to read...

[Marta Booklover · Rating 1 out of 5]

Книга зовсім не про те, про що виглядає. Про гормони так би мовити тільки один чи два розділи. І то важко довіряти авторці, адже вона не лікар. Тому навіть та інформація така як з гуглу. Інша частина книга про її власні проблеми пов'язані з місячними і плач про те, що її не розуміли навіть лікарі. Мені її звісно шкода, але читати про це цілу книгу таке собі задоволення. Моменти возвеличення вагіни і всіх жіночих штучок це взагалі...

[Eva]

this was such an interesting book, and perfectly balanced between a personal and scientific narrative. a necessary read for anyone interested in the conversation on woman's reproductive health, trying to destigmatize it, and the everyday sexism that takes place in medicine.

[Rosalie]

vrouwen worden echt in ieder aspect van hun leven niet serieus genomen en ik ben gewoon zo moe

[Isobel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this most amazing, informing and relatable book I have ever read.
This book has literally allowed me to understand my menstral cycle and PMS more than anybody I know or any healthcare professional I have been in contact with.
Its literally made me cry twice.
It highlights how women get ignored and
not taken seriously by healthcare professionals (in this day and age) when we say we're in pain period or non period related... it highlights how we've always been made out to be liars + sheds light on women's long history of being accused of hysteria and being too sensitive (because of PMS) and then thrown into Asylums.
It uncovers how BDP is a bad name for real suffering.
It touches on the stigma that surrounds women and the female reproductive system and it goes into depth about each phase of our menstral cycle, scientifically explaining whats happening in our bodies when we start to feel more like crap, or more tired or anxious, why we experience more brain fog when we do.
It speaks up about the trauma women go through.

The first time it made me cry is because it was helping me understand my PMS better.. giving an explanation what was happening in my body to make me feel the way I do.

The second time is because of it was in writing of the authors experience of how she was misinformed about the pain of getting an IUD fitted and the trauma the experience had caused her. The same thing fucking happened to me!

Honestly, our education system is FUCKED.
Girls and women need to be more informed and better taught about what we know about our menstral cycles and the history women we've been through and the demoralisation we go through when our healthcare professionals don't listen to us and we've been asking/begging for so long to be referred to a gynecologist.

Read this book.

Its fucking magic.

Massive respect to the author Eleanor Morgan 👏👏👏

I honestly, I could not put this down.

"Hormonal".

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was well researched and I enjoyed that. However, I felt that it lacked structure, the author would start writing about a topic and move on to something different and irrelvant (in my opinion) within the same chapter.
I liked it but I wouldn’t recommend it. The research is there but also a lot of opinions from the author. I believe that if you are writing a book based on scientific evidence, personal opinions and biases shouldn’t be there. I felt that I was reading a novel of someone’s experiences but with a lot of technical concepts and research.
Overall I am not sure of how I feel about this book.

[Inês · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestamente daria a pontuação de 2,5 estrelas.. mas não havendo... vai 3.
Não é um livro mau, apenas esperava mais. A primeira parte sobre o corpo biológico estava bem. Mas, depois entramos na parte psicológica e como é afetada pelas hormonas, e aí perdeu-me um pouco.
Não era que não concorda-se, mas estava tão ligado às experiências da autora que perdia o interesse. A linha condutora do livro era a experiência da autora e só isso é que importava. Sim falava da ciência (que foi honestamente o que manteve a ler), mas de resto era um artigo gigante de opinião, disfarçado de livro.

[Ivanka Voytsekhovych · Rating 3 out of 5]

Сплутані думки. Сподобалося, тому що я дізналася чимало нового і говорила про це з усіма, хто попадався під руку. Але й добряче пригнітило: виходить, що ми - рабині своїх гормонів, не владні над сумом, гнівом чи ще там чимось. Авторка багато пише про свій шлях, але я так і не збагнула, чи вона знайшла ліки від свого тяжкого ПМС, чи ні. Це класна тема, але я не впевнена, чи варто починати знайомство з нею саме з цієї книжки.

[Svitlana Linska · Rating 1 out of 5]

Стиль книги - тільки що нагуглений текст із дуже великим вмістом лишніх слів і оцінок, які висвітлюються наче експертні, хоча з багатьма з них можна не погодитись, постійні повтори які жінки пригнічені, просто в різних словах, описи того, що очевидно.

Зокрема, поверхневі судження щодо MBTI.

Добило те, що авторка вже коли купу всього перепробувала тільки збагнула про зміну свого раціону харчування.

Я вважаю, що це все взагалі через те, що вона атеїст.

Переклад з купою помилок.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really good an exploration of Pms,.periods, women's pain (and it's dismissal - I would say this book makes you feel seen), history of hysteria and controlling women, the science around PMS and the whole what is real and what isn't. Interesting chapters on sex and the rise of anti depressants and women uptake them. I learnt a lot. Ultimately suggesting we don't try and hide our excesses. A good non fiction but with enough personalisation to take you on a journey.

[Doctor Roxx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Der wissenschaftlich aufklärerische Teil des Buches war sehr interessant und hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Das habe ich einiges gelernt. Sollten auch Männer unbedingt mal lesen. Die persönliche Geschichte ist etwas ausufernd und extrem, so dass ich mich damit wenig identifizieren konnte. Aber gut, sonst hätte die Autorin wahrscheinlich keinen Anreiz gehabt, so ein Buch zu schreiben.

[Hollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although engaging, I felt this book went for breadth or topic rather than depth. It’s a whistle stop tour through a lot of content, only really allowing the reader to play with an idea before moving on rather than submerging the reader in discourse. It’s a brief book on a topic that is anything but, carrying the history of centuries of lore, myth and research in under 300 pages.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Wasn't what I was expecting but definitely thought provoking. The only real criticism I can make is that that some women may come away from reading this and assume that all standard HRT is equine -derived, which is far from the case. Overall, however, would recommend.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book filled with both science and anecdotes that taught me a lot about how my body works and how female bodies and emotions have been viewed by throughout history. Something I missed in the book was more inclusive language.

[Eloise Desoutter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I'd read this at school. Both sexes require much more robust, holistic, and wholesome education about our bodies and how they work so we can make agency-informed choices as we age. Much of this is learned too late, if at all.