Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
Ultimately, I’m always going to encourage patients to do whatever is under their control. There’s always going to be factors that are beyond our control, right? We can’t control our genetics, we can’t control whatever happened in our childhood or how our family brought us up or anything like that, but we do have some semblance of control over the lifestyle choices we make.
00:23
This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I wanna know it all. We need to normalize educating and talking about polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS. As healthcare providers, we don’t talk about this condition enough. It’s a disease I had never heard about, but it’s so widespread.
00:53
It affects 8 to 13 percent of women of reproductive age and is the most common cause of infertility. One in ten women have PCOS, so just amongst us friends, some of us will have it. It affects a woman from puberty to childbearing age and thereafter with other systemic diseases.
01:22
So in essence, it affects a woman’s whole life. But we don’t talk about it. To help normalize needing support and talking about it and educating others about PCOS, I have with us Dr. Anne Hussein. Dr. Hussain is a naturopathic doctor and the author of a new book on periods called The Period Literacy Handbook.
01:50
Her practice in Newmarket, Ontario, focuses on periods and hormones, especially PCOS, endometriosis and fertility. Her own journey with PCOS and lack of menstrual education growing up in Pakistan drives her passion for holistic healthcare. Welcome Dr. Hussain. Thank you, Dr. Hussain for being on today. It’s a pleasure to have you.
02:18
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about what is PCOS? It’s not a simple answer to this question, but PCOS is a metabolic and a hormonal condition. So there’s elements of both in it. In order to meet the diagnostic criteria to get a diagnosis of PCOS, we need to meet two out of three criteria that we follow. Most of the world follows the Rotterdam criteria.
02:44
So the criteria are such, number one, you have irregular cycles or an ovulatory cycle, so cycles where ovulation isn’t happening. And that oftentimes will look like delayed cycles or cycles that are irregular in length. So sometimes people can go months and months without having a period. And that was me for sure earlier on in my life. I would have a period sometimes every 40 days, every 30 days, every three months.
03:13
So it really was random. The second criteria is hyperandrogenism. So that could be elevated, those male type hormones, so testosterone, androstenedione, or DHEA, they’re elevated on blood work. Most commonly though, people are presenting with the symptoms associated with that. So that could be hercutism, excess thick, coarse hair growth where you don’t want it, so that terminal hair growth. It’s not the same as like the…
03:39
peach fuzzy, like the light hair that a lot of us have on our faces. A lot of that kind of hair is genetically determined. As a South Asian, I can definitely relate to that because I have lots and lots of light hair around my whole face. So yeah, you can have, so that’s one of the symptoms of hyperandrogenism, but it could also be acne, especially treatment resistant acne or acne where you really do need to layer in a few different treatment modalities.
04:07
And also pattern hair loss. So hair loss around the crown, around the hairline, where your fringe is sort of like the side of the fringe, the side of the heads are spared. And then the third criteria is actually having polycystic ovaries on ultrasound. So…
04:27
It doesn’t necessarily, it’s not necessarily the same as having ovarian cysts. So ovarian cysts are usually functional. So when we have a period, when we have a menstrual cycle, we can get these fluid filled sacs for numerous reasons. It’s not the same in polycystic ovarian syndrome or in polycystic ovaries. What we’re seeing is immature follicles. Those follicles aren’t growing appropriately and follicles have eggs in them. And that’s part of the problem, right? We can’t reach ovulation. So they sort of grow.
04:54
in more than a dozen bunches in the ovary, and the ovary can as a result also be enlarged. Now the recent diagnostic attachment to that point of the criteria is elevated AMH levels. So AMH is anti-malarion hormone. We oftentimes hear it in the fertility world to check ovarian reserve, and it’s our follicles that make AMH.
05:19
So in polycystic ovarian syndrome, we can have elevated AMH because we have a lot of arrested development and mature follicles that are secreting AMH. So those are kind of the criteria. You don’t need to have all three. You can have two out of three. You need a minimum of two out of three, but you could obviously have three out of three. So for example, I have PCOS and my PCOS, I never had polycystic ovaries, but hyperandrogenism and irregular cycles
05:48
And then if I look at my family history and my mom and my aunts and my cousins, a lot of them have PCOS. It just wasn’t as common a diagnosis when they were growing. Right. So a quick question. So, you know, you said you need to have two of the few of them. So if you don’t have the ovarian or sorry, the cysts in general, and you, you know, you’re only having the excess hair or the thicker coarser hair or abnormal, you know, periods, how do you know you have PCOS? Like is it then that blood test that you do the AMH level?
06:18
And regardless of not having the cysts, your AMH, I think you said levels will be high. How is it confirmed if you’re not having those cysts as an ultrasound?
06:31
Yeah, so on blood work, the only tests that are sort of going to be confirmatory in terms of a diagnosis will be your androgens and AMH. AMH is usually used, either use the ultrasound, the polycystic ovary sort of criteria or AMH. We usually don’t do both and neither of those is applicable when you’re younger.
06:56
because when you’re younger and in your adolescent years still, or you just have started having a period in those first few years, we actually expect a little bit of irregularity as your body is learning how to menstruate in the first place and to mount a menstrual cycle. We can have a higher incidence of an ovulatory cycles just very naturally. So we’re not using those criteria back then, but we do want to pay attention to it and track patients over time when they’re younger. And there might be other elements of their presentation that
07:26
sort of puts that in our differential diagnosis list. Now, going back to your question, our job also then is to rule out any other causes of those symptoms. So irregular cycles can also be caused by hypothalamic amenorrhea, right? So where the brain has shut down menstrual activity, either because of low caloric intake or because of excessive sport athletic activities, usually…
07:50
based on some sort of stress response, right, a physiological stress response for energy conservation, or because someone is going through something really, really traumatic, and it’s all about perceived stress at the end of the day. We also wanna rule out something like a thyroid disorder or adrenal hyperplasia. So there are things that we want to rule out as well, but looking at the symptom presentation. So even when we look at the hyperendrogenism, we don’t need to have…
08:19
confirmed elevated DHE or testosterone on blood work if someone has pattern hair loss and cystic acne, right? The cystic acne and the hair loss gives us enough of that information. It’s still nice to do the blood testing because we can then monitor it over time and see if it’s frankly elevated in bloodstream, right? Like also to corroborate that, but we need one or the other, not both. So as a parent, if you have a teenager and you’re…
08:48
I think this is kind of the alerting factors where you could suspect this in your teenager. So if you see a couple of those factors, maybe it’s not showing up on the blood work, but you could suspect this and as they get older, that blood work might show it. But we’ll talk a little bit later about factors and ways to help, but I guess as a parent, you would wanna start those, whether they’re naturopathic therapies or eating healthier and certain things.
09:17
just knowing that they have a couple of those factors, correct? For sure, and we want to track them, right? I always say our memories are imperfect and we all tend to forget things. So really, I get a lot of teenage patients, usually they’re children of my existing patients, and I really emphasize the importance of tracking their menstrual cycle. Even if it’s just the first day of their period, even if that’s all they’re doing, I’m pretty happy with that because then we can…
09:46
look back and see if they’re normalizing over the first 12 to 24 months of their menstrual life. If they are noticing something different, I encourage them to jot those things down as well, whether that be like pain or if they’re noticing acne or if they’re noticing something different. So yeah, having those conversations inside and outside of the doctor’s office, because ultimately most of health happens outside of the doctor’s office, we do definitely want to start paying attention to.
10:14
Especially if there is also a family history of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular disease, like blanket statement, right, pertaining to stroke, heart attack, diabetes, hypertension, right, like all of those things. We also want to pay a little bit more attention to that because those are some predisposing factors or a frank PCOS diagnosis, right, like those are predisposing factors to offspring having PCOS too.
10:40
I think, you know, none of us really talk about period tracking. So I love that you said that, you know, when we were younger, nobody, I mean, we were, we were a little bit shy. We didn’t even talk to our parents about our periods, right? Um, you know, so let alone tracking it, you know, if we missed a period, we, I don’t think I ever told my mom, you know, we just missed it, you know, um, and we were shy, we didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t have open conversations about our periods and how that they can really tell us a lot about our health, right? Whether they’re regular or not. So.
11:09
You know, I think now that I’m older, you know, I will carry a track now because I just like to and I think that’s good. But I never knew about that till so many years later. So I love that you said you’re encouraging teenagers or parents to encourage their teenagers to start period tracking. Are there a couple of apps that you know of? Like I know there are some apps that people can just track it easily or teenagers, you know, they all have their phones. Do you have some that you recommend? No affiliation, just a disclaimer.
11:36
But I do like the Period Purse is a menstrual equity organization and menstrual education organization in Canada. They have one called Menstruation Nation, and they don’t sell your data. They don’t even store your data. So I really like that aspect. And given on what’s going on in the States, I think everyone’s a little bit more wary of apps selling their data. Honestly, my solution usually is putting it in my calendar for me.
12:06
figure out what works for you. For me, I don’t want another app, I just track it in my calendar if there’s something different that I’m noticing compared to my usual, I’ll note that down too. So it’s really whatever is easiest. But going back to your point of like youngsters tracking now, it’s so much easier for them than it was for us to write like there’s more information, there’s more awareness, there’s more just discourse on periods in general. And there’s more apps and things like that that they can use to track that will give them a little bit of data.
12:36
But again, like any data that an algorithm in an app is telling you still needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Right. Right. Like someone could have a very regular menstrual cycle and still not be ovulating. That can happen in PCOS as well. So yeah, I do the same. I just put it into my calendar. So, you know, that’s, you know, for me, that’s easy. I don’t want another app either. But that’s great to encourage them to. So I think.
13:01
most people with PCOS are going to say, especially as they get older, right, at more of that reproductive age of why me? Why did this happen to me? So why? I know such a such a simple question with a complex answer. So just like any chronic long-term complex issue, it’s multifaceted. Even the the way that things develop, right? Like it is going to be multifactorial.
13:30
And in this case, there is a strong genetic component. There is associations with in utero exposures, whether that’s to the mom’s hormonal milieu, whether that is other exposures like environmental and things like that. Then there’s early childhood programming, family of origin, lifestyle, nutrition, like all of those components growing up. There is what’s happening around puberty time.
13:58
There is like that family history of cardiovascular disease. There’s just so many different components involved and there’s not, and that’s also, I think, why we don’t have one thing that we give for PCOS patient support. We really are looking at addressing a few different things. It’s very similar to if we’re addressing cardiovascular disease, right? We may give someone medications to lower their cholesterol and to prevent.
14:26
cardiovascular event, right? However, we still implement lifestyle change, we still implement the stress component, stress management strategies, we still talk about sleep, which is really important, right? Like, so no simple, simple answer. But in a lot of patients, what we are finding is that there are genetic changes, like, so at the level of our DNA, there’s a little bit of change, especially in that hormone pathway, insulin pathway.
14:56
that tends to lead to a little bit more insulin resistance. And then there’s the whole communication piece too, right? Between insulin and cortisol and your testosterone and your brain and your ovaries, like all of it isn’t evolved. And I think we’re gonna learn more in the next decade. We definitely have learned a lot more in the last decade. So this is the most we’ve ever known about PCOS. And I think in the next decade, we’ll be able to say a little bit more. Yeah, and the most I’ve ever heard about PCOS, right? Like…
15:21
I mean, PCOS is really coming out with a buzz. You know, when I started practicing, you know, 15, 16 years ago, nobody talked about PCOS at that point. So that’s great. Totally, and I would say that at the beginning, so I’ve been in practice for almost 10 years now, at the beginning of my career, I was the one pushing for that diagnosis and really pushing for more testing. And now sometimes I am correcting an over diagnosis of PCOS because it’s not PCOS.
15:47
So we’ve sort of, I feel like, you know, the pendulum swings one way and then the other way, and then we’ll land in the middle sometimes. So, you know, you mentioned health and systemic health, cardiovascular. Tell me the impact that PCOS has on our health long-term. So, you know, as we’re getting older, my understanding is that’s when we experience those health issues. So what kind of health issues and how can we kind of proactively think about those issues?
16:16
Yeah, it’s a good question. So ultimately, I’m always gonna encourage patients to do whatever is under their control. There’s always gonna be factors that are beyond our control, right? We can’t control our genetics, we can’t control whatever happened in our childhood or how our family brought us up or anything like that, but we do have some semblance of control over the lifestyle choices we make now. And that’s really what we try to focus on, regardless of age.
16:42
Because one of the problems in PCOS patients we do find is that younger patients are oftentimes dismissed because they are told to come back when they’re trying to get pregnant because in the medical system’s mind, and that’s not all practitioners, right? There’s a small subset of practitioners who will talk like this to PCOS patients, but because it’s a strictly reproductive health issue, which is not true. So to your point, there are long-term metabolic risk factors. And if we think about currently,
17:11
heart health, cardiovascular disease is still a very big issue and the biggest killer of people in general, right, over time. So it is the risk factors we want to mitigate or address as soon as possible.
17:24
So we’re talking about blood sugar regulation. We wanna get on top of that. And we can do that through a lot of lifestyle choices, right? Like we can do that by decreasing saturated fat content in our diets with decreasing red meat, increasing fiber, increasing our plant protein, increasing our fruits and vegetables and whole grains in general, making sure we have protein adequacy and we have balanced meals, right? So balanced meals that have the protein, the carb, the fat all together in one nice package.
17:52
Not to say that we can’t enjoy our chocolate cake or chips every now and again, right? Like there’s a time and place for everything. I’m all about balance and flexibility really, and for the most part making nutritious choices. It doesn’t have to be like extreme by any means. Then exercise would be another component of that. So exercise, obviously we want, so it’s interesting because PCOS and exercise, the most data we have is actually on HIT. So high intensity interval screening.
18:21
which people sometimes shy away from because we have this cortisol misinformation on the internet currently. And it’s a big problem because there can be cortisol issues in PCOS and a lot of it comes actually more from like their cycling of restriction and when we restrict food, when we restrict everything then obviously like the stress piece is a little bit more something that we need to be concerned about.
18:49
Mental health disorders are a little bit more common or prevalent in PCOS patients. Thyroid autoimmune thyroid issues are more prevalent in PCOS patients. We have vitamin D deficiency associated with PCOS patients. So there’s cardiovascular risks and there’s other risks involved. We can start to work on them, especially if we start young, right? Sometimes we start normalizing them automatically. So I get patients in my in their 40 or early 40s sometimes.
19:18
And they’re like, well, I no longer have PCOS. But the truth is that they’ve changed their nutrition or having more wholesome nutrition and they have exercise. So they’ve actually in effect managed their PCOS symptoms through their lifestyle. And sometimes there’s also this age normalization effect that can happen. But really for females, like most of our cardiovascular risks start to change around menopause, right? Like in that transition to menopause, that’s really when things start to come up.
19:46
or during pregnancy, which is kind of like a stress test on the cardiovascular system, which is when we see an increased incidence of or risk for gestational diabetes and things like that. So like really the earlier we can start is the best thing we can do, but anywhere along the line, wherever you are, it’s the next best time to start working on those things that are under our control. Right, and I think what you said was like, foods are under our control or diet and exercise is under our control.
20:14
So those are the main things that we can control. Obviously, if you have a teenager who has shown these signs of it, controlling it or helping to make those active lifestyle choices. And I don’t think we did that in our generation, right? When we were younger, we wouldn’t have known we had PCOS or signs of it. Maybe some of us knew like, okay, hormones are out of whack and things like that, but I don’t think we would have proactively taken those diet, made those diet changes or…
20:44
been more active and thought about our health the way we can now. So, I love that you said making these health changes can, I wanna say delay the onset or maybe not even cause the onset of certain conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular issues, vitamin D’s, deficiency, thyroid issues. But it’s so interesting to see that PCOS has so many, kind of plays with your whole system.
21:13
that it can cause so many systemic issues. Totally. Yeah, and obviously going back to your point about how things play out over time, sometimes genetics do trump everything, and you need a little bit more management strategy. It would be remiss of me to not say that. But yeah, you’re right. In the past, I think in general, we don’t learn much about nutrition. I don’t know about you. Whenever I talk to patients, I always have to remind them that.
21:38
I learned nutrition on the go as well, right? Like the more I work, the more I learn and I continue to learn because we also don’t know everything about everything at this point in time, right? Like it’s sort of impossible to know all of that. So the best we do is take where we are and start to move forward from there. And then you’re right, like in the past, I think with teenagers, it’s also really hard to just get them to eat.
22:04
depending on the family and depending on the teenager, right? So it’s sometimes difficult to offer age appropriate or information to those teenagers. And as they grow up, then they sort of start to pay a little bit more attention and maybe be a little bit more involved in their health. So I think there’s also like, there’s so many different things like going on and depending on like your access to food or access to care or access to…
22:31
wherever you live, right? Depending on where you live, like there’s so many other barriers that people can face as well. But in PCOS, there’s also a very high degree of disordered eating and body dysmorphia, which oftentimes like feeds into the condition itself, right? Like when we think about the common advice going back to like that maybe not so helpful doctor that they’re seeing who is just focusing on weight, for example.
22:55
There can be a lot of different messaging coming from the medical system even, right? That’s not really conducive to them making a change in a positive way, right? Like depending on how that message is being received. Because weight loss can be helpful for PCOS too, like just a 5%-ish reduction in body weight can restore ovulation in people who aren’t ovulating. But sometimes that advice is given without like…
23:25
proper screening for disordered eating or for an outright eating disorder sometimes, or just asking the patient about their history if they’ve already made changes that have led them to a better place. You know, I know as a naturopathic doctor, you know, you make these recommendations or you help with the diagnosis of PCOS versus other issues like you were talking about. Are there supplements? And I’m not saying it’s…
23:51
they’re right for everybody. Obviously, people have to take the advice of their doctors, but are there certain supplements specifically for PCOS that are the top of your list that you like to consider after blood work and knowing that they’re deficient in it or too high in it? What are supplements that you would generally recommend? Safe supplements. So ultimately, it’s a little bit going to depend on the…
24:17
picture, right, the presentation of the PCOS that someone is presenting with. So vitamin D deficiency is very common in PCOS. So obviously we want to address that. We want to test and then just make sure you’re adequate in it. That’s really the thing we’re going for. Then when we take a look at PCOS itself and the metabolic dysfunction that’s happening, especially like the insulin resistance and the hyperandrogenism, the two most studied supplements that we have are going to be
24:47
It basically facilitates signaling between insulin and your cell to help with insulin resistance. And it has a little bit of a role in the thyroid. It’s been really well studied. It improves ovulation rates. It decreases androgen levels, improves menstrual cycles. It reduces the risk of gestational diabetes in pregnancy. There’s a lot of different things that it does. And we think that there is a genetic issue in myelocital production in the body in PCS patients and a large majority of PCS patients.
25:16
So we’re sort of overcoming a bit of a genetic issue with myonacetal production. And then NAC, N-acetylcysteine, commonly used actually for bronchitis and things like that. However, it’s a potent antioxidant and it also helps with insulin sensitivity in a different way. And it reduces androgens and restores ovulation and decreases polycystic ovaries. So those are the two most studied supplements that we have.
25:43
For PCOS, there’s a lot of other ones that are addressing secondary characteristics of PCOS or other mechanisms in the background. So we have lots of different antioxidants that we’ve studied for the higher inflammation that’s usually present, systemic inflammation that’s present in PCOS. We have some minerals that we’ve studied. We’ve studied things for acne and stuff like that. So some of it then we are going into symptomatic territory.
26:12
sort of like the Inositol and NAC really address some of the broader and overarching themes in PCOS. Excellent. Do you mind touching a bit on metformin and PCOS? So a lot of my patients, you know, when we do health history, they’ll let me know that they have PCOS and that they’re taking metformin, you know, for it. Do you mind touching on that and the benefits of that or side effects or risks with it?
26:38
Yeah, so metformin oftentimes is prescribed for the, again, metabolic component of it, but it also helps improve ovulation rates. So if we’re looking at PCOS patients and our primary goal with them usually is to restore menstrual cyclicity, which is going to happen if we get them to ovulate. So metformin facilitates that, which is why it’s been historically prescribed. We also have our like
27:04
GLP-1 analogs that are, sorry, receptor agonists that are coming into play now that are oftentimes being prescribed because someone’s blood sugar is off and they may need to sort of reduce their BMI. However, apart from that component of addressing the PCOS symptoms, we don’t have any other data on it just yet. The other most common medication that’s prescribed is the birth control pill.
27:29
and the birth control pill will do a couple of things. A, it’ll have induce a bleed regularly, which decreases the risk of endometrial hyperplasia. That’s also why we want to have regular menstrual cycles in PCOS because the lining starts to build up. And if let’s say we don’t have a period for multiple months on end, like four to six months, then we run the risk of those endometrial cells, the uterine lining growing sort of uncontrollably because we don’t have progesterone to oppose it. And then we are not shedding it. So that…
27:59
is a risk enhancing factor for endometrial cancer in the long run, especially if there’s atypical cells in there. However, having a regular menstrual cycle mitigates a lot of those risks. So the reason why we use a lot of these medications for PCOS are to improve, to decrease that risk and also address some of the symptoms or the blood sugar dysregulation, especially in the case of something like metformin.
28:24
So we used to use metformin a lot more liberally during pregnancy in PCOS patients. However, now we’re finding that the kids who were exposed to metformin in utero.
28:35
they have more adverse outcomes as they’re growing up. So in their early childhood, there’s more metabolic dysfunction at that point in time. So we’re a little less heavy-handed with metformin during pregnancy, but leading up to pregnancy, we oftentimes will use it to improve menstrual cyclicity as well as blood sugar dysregulation. And that starts to improve a lot of other symptoms as well. Right, like if we are making our hormones in the way that a menstrual cycle.
29:03
a healthy menstrual cycle usually looks like, then we also start to see a shift in some of the other symptoms that are being experienced. Do you find that, I find this, but you would know more about, a lot of our patients are getting on metformin or finding out they have PCOS when they’re at childbearing age trying to have a child. And that’s when they realize, they investigate and they find out they have PCOS so they get on metformin.
29:32
Do you find that’s the case in your practice where we’re not finding or detecting PCOS much earlier, we’re tending to detect it as patients proactively going to their doctors only when they’re at that childbearing age? I would say most of my patients that is fairly accurate and it’s also because that’s the time when patients are paying a little bit more attention to their menstrual cycles, right? Or they were on birth control pill prior to trying to conceive or thinking about conception.
30:00
And the birth control pill really, it manages a lot of those symptoms. It decreases circulating testosterone, which can help with acne. It gives you the semblance of irregular bleed. So you don’t know if you have irregular cycles or not. Right, so like it takes care of a lot of the symptoms that people are usually concerned about with PCOS, whether they went on the pill for that concern or just for contraception regardless as being effectively managed by the birth control pill. So you’re right, when they come off it, they’re like, oh.
30:29
my cycles are actually a little bit wonky. And I never knew that because I’ve been on the pill for so long, or I’m just realizing that my cycles are actually like 45 days or 60 days or just super irregular. And I never really paid attention to that because that was my normal, right? I think in the Canadian healthcare system, sometimes we’re not particularly proactive about menstrual health in general. Where when we’re younger, we don’t have that many appointments with our family doctors.
30:56
when we could be having a little bit more, we don’t have that infrastructure, I don’t think, in place for people to just go in and get that done. I oftentimes have patients in their young twenties and they’ve never had blood work done in their entire life. And they’re super, even when they’re super tired and they’re like probably anemic, right? So I think that there is that gap between teenage years and early twenties where a lot of patients get missed. And then as they…
31:22
either are coming out of school and now can pay attention to their bodies because they have some time, or they’re thinking about fertility, or just because of the conversation that has shifted around periods in general and they’re learning about it a little bit more, or their bodies are changing, whatever the case may be, that is when we’re finding that a lot of patients are getting either diagnosed or they’re sort of suspecting of PCOS.
31:49
Yeah, like, I mean, I love that because I really want to encourage health care providers in general. Sometimes there are signs of it or our patients will talk to, even as an eye doctor, you know, I’ll get patients sometimes talk to me about their symptoms, which, you know, might point to PCOS. So, you know, referring them to the appropriate provider like yourself is so important. And I think as collaborative health care, we need to be more aware of PCOS and educate our patients more.
32:16
and as well as parents, you know, being more aware in our daughters of this condition and proactively making health changes accordingly. So I love that, you know, thank you Dr. Hussein, you know, for being on today. You know, I wanna tell our listeners and viewers that you have written an amazing book. So, you know, can you tell us a little bit about your book and where our listeners’ viewers can find you? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about hearing things like this.
32:46
which is why I wrote a whole book about it. It’s called The Period Literacy Handbook. It really is like not just science, but also some of like the, just in multifaceted nature of health and menstrual health in specific and hormones, how we can’t think about them in isolation. So it’s that, talks a little bit about menstrual equity and some of the systemic barriers that we face in reproductive health in general.
33:10
It’s available across the globe on most online retailers like Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Foils, and the UK. And then if you’re looking for me, you can always find me on Instagram or my website. Thank you. And, you know, I encourage everyone, you know, to listen to this episode and also have that open conversation, whether it’s with your friends, your parents, you know, your doctor about your period, your menstrual cycle.
33:39
you know, let’s talk openly about these things because you know, we’ve, we’ve held it within, put it behind, you know, closed doors for too long. And this is a big indication of women’s health. So thank you, Dr. Hussain for being on today. It was a pleasure to have you. Thank you listeners and viewers for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me,
34:09
Follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal. Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!