00:00Imagine sitting across from a doctor begging to have your pain taken seriously and being dismissed over and over.
00:07For people suffering from conditions like endometriosis or PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, it's an experience they know all too well.
00:16Playwright Taylor Kenyon is one of those people.
00:19She suffers from PMDD and she's written a play about her experience with the condition that causes extreme mood swings,
00:27depression and anxiety a week or two before her period.
00:30I've definitely struggled with periods since I was like probably 11 and I used to be sick from the pain,
00:37like physically sick and things like that.
00:39And you know, like even struggled to go to school.
00:42Obviously it's the link with mental health, so for a long time I thought it wasn't linked to my periods.
00:47I thought like I just had really bad depression, bad anxiety, personality disorders.
00:53I thought I had bipolar, things like that.
00:55So the time that I was like, oh, this is linked to my periods was probably when I found the
01:02information about premenstrual dysphoric disorder online.
01:05And I was like, that ticks all the boxes of the symptoms.
01:09I then started writing the play actually as a kind of catharsis for myself.
01:14I was, it wasn't like something I was going to produce.
01:18It was just, I'm just kind of writing this to understand myself.
01:22I'm not hysterical or psychotic or a bloody witch.
01:27PMDD affects one in 20 females at birth who experience periods and can be considered a disability under the Equality
01:34Act.
01:35Celebrities like Vicki Patterson, Zara Larson and Dixie D'Amelio have all spoken out about their struggles with the condition.
01:41And this is like, a lot of people have this, but no one talks about it at all.
01:46I myself have got PMDD and it's been something I've been dealing with for about 10 years.
01:50And initially when I was trying to get a diagnosis, I was passing pill at the post, ignored, dismissed, made
01:55her feel ashamed.
01:56As if it was something every woman was dealing with and I just wasn't strong enough.
02:00PMDD is one of many women's health conditions we still don't know a lot about.
02:04And it makes getting a diagnosis or treatment incredibly difficult.
02:08I stopped going to the doctor's appointments and I didn't push it because I thought I'm, I just felt awful
02:13every time.
02:14I felt belittled and I felt stupid.
02:16Every time I came back, I thought I'm not doing that again.
02:19And even if I get the diagnosis, what does it matter?
02:22Like you put the label on it, but it doesn't, it doesn't, like you say, it doesn't treat it, it
02:27doesn't do anything for me.
02:28For Stacey Cullen, getting answers about her painful periods took decades.
02:32I got my first menstrual cycle when I was nine years old.
02:35It was very, very young and very unexpected.
02:39And I always had really awful periods.
02:43It was just tons and tons of bleeding, lots and lots of pain.
02:47I was prescribed like, yeah, heavy painkillers when I was really young.
02:52I ultimately had the privilege of going private to a psychiatrist because I was just so desperate to have an
02:59actual answer of what was going on with me.
03:02And it was actually her that suggested that it might be PMDD because she also was sort of helping me
03:09titrate my ADHD medication at the time and had me start tracking my symptoms.
03:14And it became obvious to her that it was related to my menstrual cycle.
03:20And once that sort of clicked, a lot of my life just made a lot more sense.
03:25And so I got a diagnosis a lot easier, I think, than most people do.
03:30But at the same time, when you think about it, it took probably a good 25 years of having a
03:36cycle to get there.
03:38So why is it so difficult for sufferers to be taken seriously?
03:41Women, so 50% of the population, have been neglected for so long in research.
03:45They actually weren't included in most clinical trials until not so long ago.
03:49And to this day, most conditions that disproportionately impact women are still underfunded and under-researched, which was in a
03:56report from McKinsey that came out last year.
03:58Imbrudite is a neuroscientist.
04:00She's created a scientifically backed headband to help treat PMDD and endometriosis.
04:06Nettles does brain stimulation device.
04:08It probably doesn't look like how everyone expects a brain stimulation device to look like.
04:11So it's fully wireless.
04:12It looks like a headband.
04:13You just wear it on top of your head.
04:15And it stimulates two brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the motor cortex.
04:19And in stimulating those regions, it alters your perception of pain.
04:23So you decrease in the way you perceive pain and therefore allows you to not feel pain during your periods,
04:27as well as it alters your mood regulation.
04:29So it allows you to manage your mood as well as motivation in that week leading up to your period.
04:34So symptoms linked to PMS, but also more broader conditions such as PMDD.
04:38TDCS is the technology.
04:40It is FDA approved in the U.S. for depression.
04:45It has been adopted by the NHS for the treatment of depression.
04:51It's currently being trialed in PMDD patients at Queen Mary's University in London.
04:56This is a, you know, a kind of phase one trial where we've had 22 women in each condition.
05:05So that is 22 women who underwent three months of real stimulation using the device as it's intended to be
05:13used.
05:13And then 22 women who underwent sham stimulation, so fake placebo.
05:19What we found was that over the course of three menstrual cycles, using NETL significantly reduced anxiety more than sham.
05:33And it reduced emotional reactivity more than sham.
05:38The group as a whole improved.
05:40And that is what we saw.
05:41A number of femtech companies are plugging gaps in women's health with products from tampons to help diagnose HPV to
05:49online menopause clinics available via an app.
05:52It's an industry projected to be worth $103 billion by 2030.
05:57For a long time, women weren't asked about their experience.
06:01Visible problems or any problems that impact fertility were addressed.
06:04So things like IVF were developed over, you know, 50, 60 years ago because they impacted fertility or things like
06:10oncological problems.
06:12So, for example, cancers, because obviously they lead to mortality, are being addressed a little bit more.
06:18But when it comes to what we call morbidity or the quality of life for women across life, that is
06:23always subjective.
06:24It requires someone expressing a level of pain, a level of discomfort, a level of unhappiness with their everyday life.
06:30And I think if you look at the medical literature going probably 100 years, you can't really see records of
06:35women expressing those feelings.
06:36In fact, when they were, that's when they started getting diagnosed with things like hysteria, which is our common knowledge
06:41for depression.
06:42So whenever we saw women expressing some form of chronic complaint or some experience of not thriving in some way
06:49that isn't visible externally, that is merely subjective, we saw that generally ignored.
06:54Medicine ignoring women's bodies isn't just anecdotal.
06:57The numbers back it up.
06:58A woman is 50% more likely than a man to receive the wrong initial diagnosis for a heart attack.
07:04Women spend 25% more of their lives than men in debilitating health.
07:09And endometriosis, a condition that affects 1 in 10 women, takes on average 9 years to be diagnosed in the
07:16UK.
07:16Even when a diagnosis is made, much like with PMDD, treatment is limited.
07:21So what's being done about all of this?
07:23Well, scientists like Em are working to provide solutions, but getting those solutions to the people who need them isn't
07:30so simple.
07:31Trying to convince the reviewers that this is A, a really important population that are really underserved, undersupported and need
07:40help.
07:40And that B, this intervention could be really useful.
07:46But that's the tricky thing.
07:47They're like, why would we compensate something when we're not saving more money because before we just used to not
07:52treat it?
07:53And I think that's a structural barrier that's not related to the NHS.
07:56It's a global problem for a new problem to be solved.
08:00Still, she's hopeful.
08:02The amount of progress that has happened in the last four years has absolutely stunned me.
08:06And obviously, we've been a big part of the ecosystem.
08:07But I think now seeing not only industry, but also academia finally joining the play.
08:12One of the big things driving that progress, awareness.
08:15Knowledge is power.
08:16And I also think a play or art is a really effective way of getting understanding towards not just women,
08:28but men, like everybody.
08:29The more we talk about it, the more we draw attention to it, the more we can empower people to
08:37think to themselves, this feels familiar to me.
08:41That has been affecting my life and I need to go talk to someone about it.
08:46These women sharing their stories and fighting for better solutions.
08:50I'm sure this is linked with my period.
08:53So others don't have to feel like this.
08:56Please help me.
08:59And just .
08:59OK.
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