Florence Pugh has revealed her decision to freeze her eggs, after being diagnosed with both polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis. Both gynaecological conditions impact fertility, leading her to take precautionary methods.
After opening up about her diagnosis on Dear Media’s SHE MD podcast, she added that her concerns had been dismissed by an (unnamed) UK doctor, leading her to ask for a second opinion in the US. Unfortunately, I can painfully relate to the dismissive narrative around women's concern for their gynaecological health, having dealt with the medical misogyny surrounding PCOS myself.
I was diagnosed as a teenager after a bewildering ultrasound – back then, I thought you only got one if you were pregnant. In the mid-Noughties, I can confirm there wasn't a lot said about what having PCOS meant for me, my fertility, my body, and my future. I was basically just told it was the reason behind my irregular periods. Et fin.
It's a reminder that we still don't know enough about women's health
Truthfully, I didn't give it much more thought as I navigated university and my early 20s. I was encouraged to take the combined hormonal pill for symptoms such as unusual body hair patterns and continually irregular periods, but I never got on with it as a method of contraception due to my tendency to get migraines. Once doctors learned I had PCOS and got migraines, they didn't know what to do with me in terms of finding the right contraception and caring for my PCOS at the same time. The consensus for a long time was that there just wasn't an option that could work for me. Quite frankly, the medical world let me down.
Florence – like so many of us, including myself – wasn't aware of the impact of PCOS and how many women suffer from it. After all, the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that PCOS affects up to 13% of reproductive aged women, which equates to 3 million women in the UK. “I didn't think that it was something that is common," she said. "I really just thought that it was something that you'd feel and that you'd know you had and that it wasn't really a worry.”
And yet, despite how far-reaching the effects of PCOS are, and how many people it affects, education and research around it is extremely limited and underfunded, despite campaigns from charities and organisations to strengthen support for these conditions. This feeds into a larger problem of medical misogyny, with conditions that predominantly effect women rarely prioritised and often dismissed and trivialised. Waiting lists for UK gynaecology appointments have more than doubled since 2020, leaving women in pain and confusion, with conditions like PCOS and endometriosis often left untreated and unchecked.
“There's almost no element that alcohol doesn't impact in terms of endometriosis”
Experts recommend better education around PCOS and other gynaecological conditions, in the hope that – alongside increased research – it yields more precise treatment for those of us who deal with it everyday. For those of us who want female health conditions to be treated with the same level of urgency as diseases that affect men.
A lack of education about PCOS also leads to shame around symptoms like weight gain and excess body hair. At first, I didn't realise my body was reacting to my PCOS, and I felt ashamed and uncomfortable in my own skin. Florence also said she thought both acne and “hair that shouldn't be in certain places” were just “part of being a woman”. Alas, it's not necessarily – medical misogyny just prevents conditions like this from achieving the awareness it deserves, for those who have PCOS or know and love someone who does.
In the few years since I’ve started to look closer at my own PCOS experience, I’ve discovered that it has the ability to impact so many elements of my life. My sleep, my gut health, how I react to different exercise regimes such as strength training and cardio, even my sex life. It feels like there's nothing the condition cannot touch, holding court over my body.
Florence also spoke about the lifestyle changes that are required to manage your PCOS appropriately. “You realise you have to change your lifestyle, you have to be proactive and think ahead into the future,” she said. “I think [for] lots of young women, that's not really necessarily what you're thinking of doing when you're in your 20s.” But if we had better education and research around the condition, we might feel more free to make these decisions around our bodies, in a timely fashion.
When it comes to my fertility, I have absolutely no idea if my PCOS would affect my ability to have children. But it seems likely, seeing as and 70% of women with PCOS have fertility problems. And while many women, including Florence, are opting to freeze their eggs as a way of increasing the odds of conceiving, not all of us can afford to. The uncertainty and lack of clarity around PCOS and each individual woman’s fertility is a constant source of anxiety.
So much of the misogyny, misinformation and dismissal of PCOS and other gynaecological conditions could begin to be combatted with education, in schools and beyond – so that those who are suffer from them feel less invisible, stigmatised, ashamed. “It wouldn't be that hard to educate everybody on this when you're at school,” Florence said in her interview. “It's something that will be the defining factor of whether you can have children or not.”
She's absolutely right, education around the far-reaching impact of PCOS defines so much for us – not just when it comes to motherhood, but our entire relationship with our bodies. Women around the world, including the three million of us in the UK, deserve more.
It's a reminder that we still don't know enough about women's health
