On today’s episode we are chatting about a topic that is too often overlooked when we talk about the health and wellbeing of our society as a whole: WOMEN’S HEALTH.  I had the pleasure of speaking with my friend Dr. Jocelyn Fitzgerald MD about her experience as Urogynecology and Pelvic Reconstruction Surgeon and advocate for women’s health matters across the board.

Many of us think about women’s health and immediately go to birth control and abortion, but the reality is that women’s bodies are far more complex than our male counterparts, and the science behind our bodies is lagging many decades behind what we know about mens bodies.

ON THIS EPISODE – WOMEN’S HEALTH MATTERS

• We discuss the history, science and politics of women’s health, and the harsh reality that until recent years the funding did not exist because women were not in the workforce.  Ouch. 
  
• With the invention of the birth control pill women were given the ability to control our own destinies, and we went to work.
  
• The importance of pelvic floor health and how it effects nearly every system in our bodies.
  
• Postpartum care and the outdated family leave systems in America, and how they effect women’s long term recovery after childbirth.  Again, we weren’t getting up and going right back to work 50 years ago.
  
• The Vagisil OMV (OH MY VAG) controversy and how the idea of weaponizing feminism and empowerment to sell the patriarchal notion that your vagina is less than perfect is damaging to women of all ages, especially younger more impressionable women.  Marketing and myths like this result in women finding themselves in their doctors offices wondering if they should have labiaplasty, or if they have infections because of normal, natural “odor” and discharge.
  
• Debunking myths about your vagina like: can yogurt cure yeast infections? Is all discharge bad?
  
  
  
  
  

MEET JOCELYN

Raised in Pittsburgh, PA alongside her 7 sisters and brothers, Jocelyn knew from a young age that she was passionate about women’s health.  She was lucky enough to have a family filled with women that would take the bus to visit her mother in Magee with every birth and discussed women’s health openly.

Now Dr. Fitzgerald, she is incredibly passionate about improving the lives of women everywhere.

From Jocelyn:

“I am a Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery specialist. I treat disorders of the female pelvic floor, such as incontinence (urinary and fecal), vaginal prolapse, vaginal laxity, pelvic pain, sexual pain, vaginal fistulas, and other postpartum dysfunction. 

In terms of my background, I went to a LOT of school. When I was an undergraduate at Penn State, I double majored in Neurobiology and Women’s Studies with a special focus in women’s health. I then went to medical school at Pitt for 5 years instead of 4, because I was in a specialized research program where I studied the molecular mechanisms of IBS and bladder pain in women. I then did my OB/GYN residency at Johns Hopkins, and finally my Pelvic Floor surgery fellowship at Georgetown.”

CONNECT WITH DR. FITZGERALD

Instagram: @pittsburghurogyn

Twitter: @jfitzgeraldmd

UPMC Magee