In today's episode, we continue the conversation on fibroids during Fibroids Awareness month! From getting proper treatment to the reality of how severe this condition is, here at Hello Uterus we are not downplaying this condition at all! Thanks for listening uterinekind!
Continuing through Fibroid Awareness month means here at hello uterus, we’re giving the best tips, advice, and information regarding fibroid treatment and diagnosis. There will be no downplaying of this condition here so you can take control of your health by bypassing the misinformation and misogyny from your uterine health experience.
Do your fibroids make you feel like you’re spiraling out of control and it’s only getting worse? Your fibroids are just like an avalanche, severe and terrifying! Listen in to this wakeup call on why fibroid treatment is so important and which options are available for you. Birth control and hysterectomies are not the only treatments. Learn about the importance of myomectomies and how one doctor is trying to change the future of uterinekind forever.
Lastly, we end on a high note that will keep our oceans as clean as your fashion sense!
Thanks for listening, learning and being you. And join us back here every Tuesday for all things uterus, in service to you, uterinekind.
Carol:
Why aren't fibroids taken seriously sooner? Why aren't people educated about fibroids earlier? Why aren't physicians up to date on modern treatments for fibroids? Meaning up to 80% of uterine kind have fibroids. It's not like it's a rare condition, and we all know how bad the symptoms are. So why is this not a bigger deal? Why no heads up that they're a thing? On today's show, smack in the middle of Fibroid Awareness Month, we go to the heart of the beast. Why fibroids aren't taken seriously and how you can flip that. I'm Carol Johnson, and this is Hello Uterus.
It's fibroid Awareness month july. Lots of organizations are raising awareness about fibroids. The White Dress project for one. They do amazing work year-round. But we have a perfect storm issue here that no.org can unravel. Lack of standardized uterine care plans. What you experience at a gynecologist isn't what I'm going to experience at a gynecologist. Lack of patient education and condition screening. Patient education is like, why are you asking that question? Why do you need to know that? Because it's my body and condition screening that can sometimes go like, well, you might have fibroids. So we'll start you on some birth control pills and we'll see how that helps your symptoms. Not effective. We also have the routine dismissal of patients lived experiences, minimizing symptoms, medicating symptoms without a diagnosis. The old assumption versus a definitive diagnosis routine. And drumroll, please. Racism and misogyny in uterine healthcare. You know it exists. Permeates even. And so do we. We're not going to ignore it. We also know that there are lots of doctors out there who are amazing. We celebrate them. We seek them out. If you're one, let us know so we can celebrate. You seek us out. But we're not going to stay silent about something that is rampant, which is racism and misogyny in uterine health care. And so here we find ourselves in a frozen fibroid hellscape in 2022. I found this study while preparing for today's episode titled patient Recommendations for Shared Decision making in Uterine Fibroid treatment Decisions. It's available at the National Library of Medicine, and it was published in 2021, not 1654. Just a little snark there. Keeps me fresh. I need the snark. So here's a little quote from this study. Despite the significant healthcare burden posed by uterine fibroids and their negative impact on the quality of life of many women, the cause of fibroids and the development of the disease are not well understood. This gap in knowledge has likely been the major reason that effective long term and fertility sparing clinical management of the disease has been elusive. Wow. They said the quiet part out loud. They said it's really bad. It's a bad disease. We don't know anything about it. And get this, that gap in knowledge, that lack of understanding, is why we don't have any solutions for this condition that affects up to 80% of people with a uterus and when I say effects, you know, we talked about this last week, it's just outrageous, right? The racism of misogyny is baked in to uterine healthcare. The powers that be, mostly men, they simply don't care. The ones that do care and we're going to talk about one in this episode. The ones that do care are out there trying to get change to happen. But I guess that then proves out that the vast majority don't care because as you'll hear later, we're having a really hard time getting changed to happen. 2022. It's a condition that really negatively, it sidelines people from life. It takes them out of life and it happens early in life. So people in their teenage years are experiencing this, have a very difficult time understanding what's going on in their bodies, can't articulate what the symptoms feel like. There's not a lot of information out there, not a lot of research. How do you get your parents to pay attention? The whole thing is just a mess. And there are multiple reasons as to why and multiple layers to the delivery of uterine healthcare. And together all of that stuff creates this really this environment that is fraught with problems. That brings me to this week's hear Me, hear Me question from Scared and Scarred, which I am really sorry to hear that. The question is my gynecologist said since I want to have children, I shouldn't treat my fibroids. And that most of the time they disappear during pregnancy. Is that true? No. Are you sure that there's an MD after this doctor's name? That's not true. I'm not doubting that you're going to an MD and I'm not doubting that your doctor said that because doctors say stuff that is not true. They do. They say stuff that's not true. I'm not saying that they're consciously disinforming you for some nefarious purpose, although I'm sure some of that happens. But they get taught something, that something is tattooed on their brain as a clinician and they run with it. And unless somebody shakes them out of their stupor and shows them data that suggests that that is not the case, they're going to keep saying that. So no, most of the time fibroids don't disappear during pregnancy. But the issue is you want to have children. And you know what? We do know that fibroids can cause infertility and fibroids can make it difficult to maintain a pregnancy. So in certain cases fibroids can cause miscarriages. And given our environment today, I don't really think that having a laissezfaire attitude about fibroids and their removal is really cool at all. I think it's dangerous actually. But you do know that you have fibroids and they are either blocking the uterine cavity or they're in the walls of the uterus, distorting it. I don't know how many you have or how big they are, and I'm not a doctor, but there are endless stories of people who thought they had one or two and had twelve when they were finally treated. I had fibroids in my 30s that were not treated, and it took me until I was 40 years old to get pregnant. I went into menopause at 45. So I had one child at 41, got pregnant at 40, delivered at 41, and then got pregnant and delivered at 42. So I have two children. I went into menopause at 45. I'm pretty sure my fibroids were impacted by paramenopause, which I somehow magically got pregnant during. And I'm glad that I could carry the pregnancy to term and not go to jail for a miscarriage, because that would have stopped if it happened today. We saw these fibroids on the ultrasound and I remember this moment in time. What's that? I thought, oh, God. Twins. The family? Yeah. Don't want that. What is that? Oh, it's just a fibroid. It's not a problem. Literally, this is what she said. It's just a fibroid. It's not a problem. They can sometimes disappear. That was it. No explanation of what it is, no description of what it is. And it's all moving so fast in that appointment and you're staring at the screen and you're hoping that you have a healthy pregnancy, and it's so glossed over. And the thing that I really always end up on is if they're not connecting the dots on this, what else aren't they connecting the dots on? Because you're saying that you want to get pregnant and they didn't connect the dots on how well, you know what? Maybe we should really get a clear understanding. Do a hysteroscopy, do a vaginal ultrasound. Let's really find out what's going on in your uterus so that you're not delayed in your quest to conceive. My advice is that you need to continue to listen because we're going to talk about a doctor and a website that I think has some solid info for you. Scared and scarred and scared. Neither is okay. So keep listening and we'll get you some more information to help you out. But now don't rely upon that flippant response because it's just that it's flippant. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll see how avalanches are like fibroids.
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Carol: I saw an avalanche video recently. They are terrifying to witness. Nature's power unleashed, gathering momentum, quickly ballooning in size. And eventually, if you remain in the path of that avalanche, it will flatten you. Same with fibroids. You know that whole, like, how it started, how it's going things on social media. It's perfect for both avalanches and fibroids. Right, avalanches. How they start. It could be one little snowball. It could be a little tiny shake. A big branch could fall. And it always starts with some small movement, some small disruption, some small intrusion into what looks like a flat wall of snow. But when the avalanche starts to move, it goes from small to massive really fast. Same with the cascade of complications that result from fibroids. So let's just take it through how it started and how it's going. So it starts like my periods are bad. You have bad periods? You have bad periods. Yes, they're bad. Now I can't go to the pool today, guys. Nope, not going to happen. Wow, this is really bad. Hey, mom, how do I deal with this? Well, my doctor says they're normal, but the pain is so bad the bleeding is a flood. I can't do insert beloved activity anymore. I hate my body. I hate my uterus. I'm not going to prom. My doctor, my mom, my teacher, my friend thinks I'm faking it. I bled through two pads and my jeans and I'm at the movies. I want to die. Work is okay, except for the ten days a month when I'm barely able to focus. I missed that promotion because I'm apparently not dedicated enough like Dan is. Who cares about the promotion? Because I just got fired. Oh, wow. There goes my health insurance. But on we press wildly stressed. Yeah, I'm kind of crushing on someone, but I just feel so gross. I need to lose weight. My stomach is so big. God, I'm broken all this blood. I can't get out of bed. The pain is excruciating to how it's going in the frozen fibroid. Hellscape, ten years or more later, I cannot wait until they cut this horror of an organ out of my body. How can one thing cause so much pain and agony? I hate my uterus. Have I told you how much I hate in my uterus? Because I hate my uterus. I hate it. And I totally trust my doctor because I've been with him since I was a teenager. And we are going to have the best party. You get where this leads, right? It leads face first into a hysterectomy. And this happens every day. It's time to stop the avalanche caused by fibroids. The avalanche is the slow destruction of all that you used to think was normal, which is then replaced by conditioning that makes you think that periods are supposed to be really painful and really bad, and it's just what we have to deal with, and we either ride it out to menopause or we rip that sucker out. I fully understand that whole how it started, how it's going routine, because I lived that. I've interviewed lots of people who have lived that. You may be living that. And I get it because there's so much misinformation out there and so many statements made by people that we respect and look up to physicians and care teams and maybe people that we see on TV or whomever that paint a picture that is not accurate. Total gaslighting. Right? Like fibroids aren't lifethreatening BS. Yes, they can be. Today, more so than ever, fibroids aren't a problem unless they're symptomatic b s. You know why? What's symptomatic? When you're told your heavy, painful periods are normal. That essentially takes all of the symptoms of fibroids and throws them back at you and says, oh no, this is totally normal. No, these are symptoms of fibroids. Heavy bleeding, painful periods. I'm not talking about a couple of days of discomfort. I'm talking about seriously painful periods with large clots, heavy bleeding. They keep you from work. They are a problem. They're not a problem for the people who see it every day. They're more like just part of daily life, right? A doctor is going to see numerous people during any given week that are dealing with fibroids. But for you, they're a problem. They're causing issues in your life, some of which you may not even recognize. Some issues you may not connect back to fibroids, which is part of why we're here, and we hope that we can really help you connect these dots. So anyway, when they say that fibroids aren't a problem unless they're symptomatic, and then they tell you that the symptoms of fibroids are normal, then what they're saying is that those can't be symptomatic fibroids because the symptoms are just a normal period. And so your fibroids aren't causing you any problems. And by the way, fibroids are benign anyway. Oh, yeah, sure. If you're a clinician, they're benign. In your world, that word means not cancerous. But in our world, when someone says benign, either you don't really connect with the word benign or you take that word as gaslighting because they're saying it's nothing. It's benign. It's not impacting you, it's not a problem. It's not malignant in its effect on your body. So let's wipe all that nonsense away and get real. Fibroids are a massive problem. They affect the vast majority of those with a uterus. They are wildly under diagnosed and undertreated, which leads to an over reliance on hysterectomies to remove fibroids. I'm putting on my Nancy Drew outfit right now because I think we're onto something here. I think we have a mystery to solve. So we've talked about this before, but just to encapsulate it, doctors prefer completely satisfied patients. Who doesn't, right? Who doesn't want a completely satisfied customer or client or patient? But what I wonder is, does that then have them rely on hysterectomies? Because they can say to a patient, you'll never have another fibroid, you'll never have another bad period. In fact, you'll never have another period to which we all cheer. But it's not cheer worthy. Hysterectomy is not cheer worthy. Cheer worthy if you have cancer, right? It is the option. It's the one you got, but not cheer worthy if the diagnosis is fibroids. What is cheer worthy is an early and definitive diagnosis and a complete representation of all treatments available to you, not just the physician's favorite or the one that makes the most money or the one that's easiest to do. And you need a crystal clear and complete explanation of the side effects and long term complications of any treatment offered. How that happens in today's healthcare system is an open question. Because without standardized care plans, we are taking our chances. Every time we dial a doctor and try to get a resolution, we're taking our chances. But here's a couple of things to watch out for. All treatments available for fibroids carry risks or have side effects. But that doesn't mean that you aren't an excellent candidate for a particular treatment. I just want you to know going in that there is no side effect or risk free treatment for fibroids. None. None of the medications are side effect or riskfree. None of the surgical procedures are side effect or riskfree. So if you are in a position to ride it out and you're with a doctor that is going to be on top of your condition. So regularly investigating the number of fibroids, whether or not they've grown or increased in number, you need that kind of coverage for this condition so that you don't get into a situation where you encounter one of those blooms. Like we talked about last week with Don, who went from having two fibroids to 16 when they finally did a myometomy and removed the fibroids, 16 fibroids. So if you're with a doctor, if you can wait and you can deal with the side effects, and by deal with them, I mean really pay attention to how these side effects are impacting you and your mental health and your emotional well being, your relationships, your activities, your work, your job, your bank account, all of that stuff, factor it all in because it's like an avalanche. Remember, it doesn't just only affect your uterus, it affects every aspect of your life. So factor that all in and say to yourself, am I really missing out on life right now? How much can I ride this out? Are these manageable symptoms? Because none of the treatments are risk free or free of side effects. So we know that they all have side effects and potential outcomes that aren't great. But doctors are really confident about the hysterectomy procedure. Hundreds of thousands are done every year in the United States. They are super confident about performing them and super confident in the results. Right. No more fibroids, no more terrible period. You're going to love it. It's interesting because in our research, one of the things that is most important to physicians is to not feel like a rookie at anything. It makes them uncomfortable. Understandable, they're doctors. They're supposed to be on top of all the research, know everything that they do, all the procedures, all the conditions, all the complications, which is just nonsense because there's so much we don't know about the human body. I mean, just hormones, everything point to it all. We know really little. There's a lot more to learn. So you can kind of get where a doctor comes from. When they rely upon a hysterectomy, they're thinking to themselves, well, I know it's a definitive solution to the problem, and I'm really, really experienced at hysterectomy. So that's the direction we're going to take. And given that there's not much research on fibroids, that means it's even harder to get physicians to change their ways. So what's worked for them in the past, that's where they're going to stay, changing their ways. Boy, that is a tough thing to do. But here's what it looks like from my perspective. After having interviewed lots of people with fibroids and lots of gynecologists, assumption rather than a diagnosis is routine if pressed to diagnose. Often treatment is delayed until it becomes absolutely necessary, at which time the fibroids will be so big that they'll need to use a super expensive robot to perform a super expensive hysterectomy. Prove me wrong. Not all doctors, but a lot of them, they have to demonstrate their value to the hospital who bought their practice. And the hospital has a new robot, and hysterectomy is $13 to $18,000. And a myomeectomy could be about $2,500 or $3,000. You see where this is going, right? So how do we change the trajectory of the person living with fibroids when we factor all that in? Most important thing is patient education. And that can't happen in 15 minutes in a doctor's office. And the second most important thing is a standardized care plan. So what you experience at your doctors, what I experience at my doctor, and we have things to measure against. And we're not in limbo because there doesn't seem to be any clear cut path forward for my condition. For all of our individual conditions, nothing is clear cut. Very little information, no standardized path. Nobody's educating me. So we stay in limbo. And the third thing that we need to do is we need to require physicians to refer patients for uterine sparing procedures to those doctors who specialize in them. Right? So your general surgeon who takes out your appendix, which we're all warned about appendicitis. We're all warned about the signs of an appendicitis. That is not something that they keep hidden, like fibroids. So when you have an appendicitis, a general surgeon can take that appendix out, but you wouldn't go to that general surgeon to perform a laparoscopic procedure on your knee to repair your meniscus. Two different things. Specialists in women's health. We just had gynecologists, actually. We just had obstetrics dash gynecologists. They do both deliver babies and take care of absolutely every single other thing that could happen with a person who has a uterus. It's impossible. It's absolutely impossible. There's no way to keep up on the research. There's no way that you can be at the top of your game if you're doing all of that and running your own business. Because doctors, they're not like actors. They don't get picked up in a limo and taken to a set, and then they get their hair and makeup done, and they get fed, and then someone brings them into the or. Suite, and they perform surgery, and then someone walks them back to their trailer where they get a massage. That is not their world. So you know what their world is like a little bit. Having listened to this show, it is intense, especially today. So we need to require physicians to refer patients out of their practice for things that they're not experts in, because otherwise, your option is the thing that they know the best, and that may not be the best for you. And you want to take control early so that you have all available options, rather than being in the position of needing a hysterectomy because the fibroids grew so much or they grew so fast or you have so many. When we return, coming full circle on why fibroids are ignored sometimes until you can literally see them protruding from one stomach. Help bring an end to endometriosis by participating in the Rose study. The study of menstrual blood may hold the key to the y of endo. From there, treatments are born. Participate in the roast study today. Visit heliouters.com and click on the roast study blog for more information, or simply google roasteti for endometriosis. It's the first link. Please participate if you can. You could hold the key to the future for all utter and kind. Thank you. Now let's get back to the show. In May of 2019, dr. Bill Parker, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences at UC San Diego school of Medicine, shed some light on something that just makes me wonder how screwed up med school is for gynecology residents. Get this in his words OB GYN residency graduation requirements mandate that each OB GYN resident perform 85 hysterectomies and exactly zero myomectomies to go into practice. Let's do on that for a second. The gynecology residency program curriculum does not include modern gynecologic treatments. Instead, it continues to ensure through its practices that hysterectomies are the preferred option for fibroid removal. But, oh, my goodness, this is a residency program. Are they talking about the freaking side effects of hysterectomies and how it should be a treatment that is only brought to bear upon a person if it is the last option rather than the preferred option, which is preferred based on faulty information or ignoring the data that we have about the longterm impacts of a hysterectomy. I'll say this every time that we bring up this conversation. There are times when a hysterectomy is the only option. And I think it's really important that we stop making it seem like it's an easy surgery because it is super complicated and it involves nerves, which really makes me nervous. You don't want to go this route unless it is the only option that you have. And then if it is the only option that you have, it's important that you understand that it's complicated so that you're motivated to find the best possible doctor that you can go see to have this surgery done. You don't want to be in a situation where you're dealing with somebody who's kind of checked out on modern treatment options and does a lot of hysterectomies and thinks that they do it the right way because talk to people. There are the potential for nerve damage with hysterectomy. There's the guaranteed impact of disrupting a communication system in your body, the endocrine system, which relies on balance in order to keep things like your heart working properly and your brain working properly. So it's important for us to know that stuff because that is going to serve to motivate you to investigate options that you may have but that your doctor may not offer to you because they're not required to train on it again. An OBGYN resident has to perform 85 hysterectomies in order to go into practice and zero myamectomies. Myamectomy is the removal of fibroids. They can go to gynecology school. My head is going to explode right now. They can go to gynecology school and graduate and go into practice without being trained on a procedure that is used to effectively treat a condition that happens to 80% of people with a Uterus, which then kicks off this secondary issue that hysterectomies are relied upon for the treatment of fibroids, which is like bringing Babe Ruth into your backyard for a baseball game. Dr. Parker submitted a petition signed by 24 24 university department chairs and residency program directors to the OBGYN Residency Review Committee asking the committee to mandate the teaching of Mayactomy procedures to OB GYN residents. Get this. The petition was rejected by the residency review committee. Why is this effective treatment not taught in med school? You have to be kidding me. When I hear something like that, I don't even know what a correlation would be that would be like. I honestly can't think of anything that is on the caliber of this. This seems yes, Nancy Drew, there's a mystery here. Kind of feels a little bit like a horror show. Why would a medical community not require training residents on a minimally invasive treatment that preserves the uterus, which then allows someone to avoid cardiovascular complications, early onset of dementia, the collapsing of their pelvic region, nerve damage. Oh, I can't feel my leg anymore. I mean, it's just crazy, right? I guess they think they have a system and it works for them, but yasa. So Dr. Parker is now asking for those people who have benefited from my ankysmes to bring the pressure, because in his words, he's like, I've done everything I can do. They're just not going to listen to me. And you know what? He's right. They're not because he's a guy. He's one of them. They're not going to listen. They're going to be like, oh, Doctor Parker, you went astray. How did that happen? But if 200,000 women rained down on them saying, hey, how about you all come into 2022 and start teaching modern ways of treating chronic uterine conditions? How about that? Maybe that will work. So if you want to pick up where Dr. Parker had to leave off and bring the pressure to get my ankomies taught in med school for gynecologists still can't believe I'm saying that. You can email Dr. Parker. This is how serious he is about this at myomectomy petition@gmail.com. Myomectomy myomectomy petition@gmail.com. Remember in our first episode of Hello, Uterus, we talked about Assessor, which is a laparoscopic device that uses radio frequency to, as dr. Gaul described in that episode, melt the fibroids like a marshmallow. This procedure is used for fibroids that grow within the walls of the uterus or outside the uterus. There's also a device called Synthion, S-Y-M-P-H-I-O-N which is used for fibroids that grow within the uterine cavity. So go back to the first episode to learn about asessa. And Synthion quickly is a historiscopic myomectomy device, meaning that it's inserted into the vagina through the cervix, passes through the cervix. The cervix is like a tube and into the uterus, and there it uses plasma to precisely shave away the fibroid and preserve the uterine cavity. And preserve the uterus and preserve the integrity of the uterus. So there's no blades. You might hear stuff about, oh my gosh. You can't have blades in the uterus chopping up fibroids because you'll spread cancer. That's not true. Fibroids are not cancerous tumors. When they say they can rarely become cancerous, they mean rarely. Rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely. It's not in the construct of the fibroid to go in that direction. A polyp, yes, but not a fibroid. But blades in a uterus, not a great thing, right? Because a blade touches the uterine wall and you take a chunk out of the wall of the uterus, you may not have a stable uterine wall anymore. So if you want to preserve fertility, that could be a real problem. But. With syntheon and this precise plasma reception, you can actually shave the fibroid down, and all of the tissue is removed in the device so it's not floating around in your uterus and then can float out your fallopian tubes and into the rest of your body. It's removed in the device, and it's incisionless. There's no cutting of your body. With laparoscopic surgery, you have to inflate your abdomen. It can cause some lingering side effects and not be a comfortable thing. This for fibroids that are within the uterine cavity. You really should check this out and find a physician that uses Symphony, because it is without a doubt the least invasive option that you have. But, gee, what a shame. Physicians aren't taught how to do my amethomines. They come out of med school with the ability to do a hysterectomy in their pocket but no other options. And then they have to rely upon medical device companies to train them, which means they only get trained on the devices they choose or those that are chosen for them by the hospital for which they work. Some doctors choose the better performing devices, which may be more expensive. Others are focused on the money, or they don't have the ability to choose. All of that limits your choices. So if you're dealing with fibroids, you got to know these two names. Assessor A-C-I-O-N. Ask your doctor what devices are used in the hospital. What devices do you use? What treatments do you offer? How many of these treatments do you do on a monthly basis? Right. Because you don't want the person who does one. My anxiety in a month. You want the person who does 50. Maybe 50 is a little high, but I would be shooting for the one who has made that the focus. We've talked about that a million times and then remember and this is alluded to on this show by physicians. If the hospital just invested several million dollars in a surgical robot, you may find yourself in the chute for a hysterectomy because utilization. So I'm happy to bring Dr. Parker to your awareness. We need to get him on this podcast, but if you need info now, visit his website, fibroidsecond Opinion.com. We'll link to it in the blog post. Fibroidsecondion.com. All right, so how do we bring this all into a box that we can carry? If your period is a problem, there's a problem. That's first and foremost primary numero uno. If your period is a problem, there is a problem. The problem is likely not cancer. I say that because I know people avoid the doctor because they're scared of getting a cancer diagnosis. And I want you to know there are a million other things that can be going sideways that are not cancer. Maybe not a million, but there are things that can be going sideways that aren't cancer, and they are treatable. And the earlier you detect them, the greater the chance of you having a minimally invasive treatment option available. Know your symptoms inside and out and be prepared to discuss them. Don't condense it all down to a bad period. That's a surefire way to get a pat on the head and a pack of birth control pills. So we're going to break out symptoms. We're going to get really crystal clear about how they impact our life. And we're going to be repetitive because that's the one way that you can break through the white noise that is a physician consultation. When they say birth control pills, you say, definitive diagnosis. That's all. Birth control pills. Cool. Yeah, I'll totally consider that after I have a definitive diagnosis. When they say Hysterectomy, you say, what other options do you offer? I am here to tell you that there are other options. So if they say it's the best option for you, you say, thank you for the information, I'll get back to you. Because you have options and life without fibroids is amazing. You will be reawakened to what life is like when you're not dealing with a chronic uterine condition. So don't delay. Know what's in your uterus and we'll be right back with ending on a high note.
Farm to fiber. I always thought of fiber and farm. Like, if someone said farm and fiber, I would think of like asparagus what are other fibrous things that you grow on a farm? Just like that kind of veggie that you're like, ah, could you really use some fiber? But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about fashion. Farm to fiber. Fashion. Traditional fossil fuel based synthetics like polyester represent two thirds of the global fiber market. Two thirds of our clothing is made from fossil fuel based synthetics. The production of Petrochemical based polyester alone accounts for more annual oil consumption than the entire country of Spain. For those of you who are regular listeners, I'm just going to say I totally did not seek out a data point from Spain about Petrochemical based polyester. And I am here to definitively say that Spain is stalking me. So along comes Kintra, K-I-N-T-R-A with a mission that we can all fall in love with a fashion industry that is free from fossil fuels. I never connected fashion and fossil fuels. I mean, I did from a shipping perspective, but I did not connect it from a perspective of the actual material itself that makes the clothing what that actually means. Overall, it's not just that you put on a shirt that has petrochemicalbased polyester in it. Each time you do laundry, millions of microfibers shed from your clothes. Microfibers from Petrochemical based polyester nylon and their recycled or biobased versions get through wastewater facilities and pollute the oceans with microplastics, tiny plastic particles. And it's equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles per year. So, you know, when you clean out your lint trap, I'm always wondering where the heck does all this stuff come from? It's like every single time I wander something, which is it's been washed 100 times and I'm still pulling these giant lint traps out, well, the water that goes in for waste treatment that's filled with microplastics. Our clothes are shedding. Micro plastics, they're everywhere. And every year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles pollutes the ocean. That's just obscuringly horrifying to me. Thank you for Tintra. Tintra designed their materials to naturally degrade in wastewater treatment facilities, meaning that the elimination of micro plastics from clothing going into oceans and into our soil. So how do they do it? Well, they care enough. We know that it takes caring about something to actually come up with a solution and then implement it, because everything is hard. Nothing is easy, right? So they care enough and they're not afraid of hard work because it must have been hard. One cofounder is a nano engineer and a surfer. So you know that while he's out there bobbing on the waves, he's thinking about the condition of the ocean. And the other is a fashion entrepreneur, and she brings an understanding of the industry to the table and what their hot buttons are and how to make materials that are going to last and please the customer. Because remember, we always want to please the customer, right? Even the doctors do. They don't want to disappoint. So they both care enough about our planet and keeping our oceans and soil clean. And their team came upon a miraculous solution. Sugar. In quotes from an article about Tintra. Instead of petroleum, QUINTRA sources corn and wheat derived sugar to produce its resins and fibers, which undergo a melt spinning process similar to polyester, nylon and other synthetic materials. This provides a comparable look, feel, and performance without contributing to the problem of micro plastic pollution. It eliminates the problem of micro plastic pollution from fashion. And eliminating micro plastics is really freaking important. So Kentured to the rescue. Less energy to produce, built to compose after use. That is really exciting. This is as exciting as when I learned that mushrooms can eat plastic. And if you don't know that mushrooms can eat plastic, that's a two for ending on the high note for you today, because that was, like, so exciting until I read the part where they say, like, we have to research this. No, you don't. They do. It some mushroom plastic. Throw the plastic in a pit, throw a bunch of mushrooms on it. Awesome. Plastic eating. The people are going to write the planet, I'm telling you. So seek out options that protect our world. Seek out options for your health, that protect you because you're the only one of you, and this is the only Earth we have. So seek options. That is my final word today. Well, not really, because I want to thank Angel for producing this podcast because she's amazing. And I also want to thank the team at Uterinkind. Every week we get closer and closer to launching an app that is going to change the experience of Uterine care for everyone. Please send your hear me, hear me questions to hello at helloUterus.com. Definitely check Hello Uterus.com for the blog post. Everything that we talk about in the podcast is linked in a link section in our blog post from that week. And I hope that you're having a great mid July wherever you are, if it's summer or winter, whatever you're dealing with, whether you're feeling awesome or you're feeling crappy, there's good stuff on the horizon, and we're going to continue to bring it to you in this podcast. So stay close, be well, and stay tuned. We'll see you next week. Bye.
Angel: The hello uterus podcast is for Informational Use Only The content shared here is to not be used to diagnose or treat any medical conditions. Please speak with a physician about your health condition and call 911 if it's an emergency. And thank you, Uterine kind for listening.