Welcome, friend! The menstrual cycle is an ordinary part of the female human life and yet it comes with so much misinformation, stigma and stress. I finally got around to reading Dr. Jen Gunter’s Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation and in this post, you will find things I learned from this book, how I approached it as well as how it helped me make sense of my experiences.
Dr. Jen Gunter fights myths and fear-mongering with real science, inclusive facts, and shame-free advice on the topic that impacts more than 72 million Americans every month: menstruation.
Most women, transgender, and non-binary people who menstruate can expect to have hundreds of periods in a lifetime. So why is real information so hard to find? Despite the significance of menstruation, most education focuses on either increasing the chances of pregnancy or preventing it. Those who menstruate deserve to know more about their bodies than just what happens in service to reproduction. At a time when charlatans, politicians, and social media are succeeding in propagating damaging disinformation with real and devastating consequences, Dr. Gunter provides the antidote with science, myth busting, and no-nonsense facts.
Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation – Review
Growing up in India, there was an advertisement I would often watch on TV for Stayfree. I can’t find it on YouTube or I’d link it here. Through numbers, it showed the age at which girls typically get their first period, and the approximate number of periods in our lifetime. And how sanitary napkins can help reduce problems. To a young girl just discovering this side of herself, this was quite informative and different from the factual uneasy way in which school talked about periods. Of course, there was silence at home. I have since learnt that Stayfree has been doing a lot of work to combat the shame around periods in India.
Nominated for Reader’s Favorite Non-Fiction book on Goodreads in 2024, Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation is a fantastic read. I did not imagine the topic of the menstrual cycle would be fun. Dr. Jen Gunter takes this heavy subject and delivers it in a hilarious and blatantly honest manner. This book is a mix of physiological information, societal perspectives around the period, the emergence of birth control, the difference in approaches and much more.
Dr. Gunter has a three fold agenda:
- To equip women with solid information about their rights in the medical system. What is ok and what is not acceptable from a health practitioner. Dr. Gunter has practiced both in the United States and Canada. With anti-abortion sentiments on the rise there as well as other challenges with female healthcare, she particularly calls out that health system. Like other books I have read about the human body, this part of the book was empowering to me.
- To share the patriarchal roots prevalent in not just the naming of certain female organs, the treatment of the female body and the very existence of the pill. I was baffled by many examples, didn’t quite see the patriarchy in some and shook my head at the rest.
- To call out the social media trends by adjacent health professionals and influencers that people follow blindly. I am so glad I never tumbled into any of these dark holes and really hope that no woman in my life subjects herself to such ridiculous information. It is important to call out BS and Dr. Gunter does it with blatant humor. I think I would get along with her.
There is so much I did not know about the options available to me. I think back to that cold afternoon in my doctor’s office when she prescribed me birth control. There were no pamphlets or information about the types of birth control – this medical professional made an assessment. Fortunately, it worked for me.
A decade after that first prescription, I was given a choice of pill vs device as well as time to think about it. What a revolutionary idea to get the sleep deprived mother to think about what she wants but not the young woman who had all the time on her hands. As life started to change again, so did my body. I arrived at the Libby book page to borrow Blood to learn some basics and see if I could glean something useful about my situation. One of my friends has read all of Dr. Gunter’s books and she encouraged me to read this.
The contents of the book are well organized. Part 1 gives the primer on the menstrual cycle. Part 2 is about the common concerns and maintenance – tracking, details around modern menstrual products and myths. Part 3 is all about bleeding and pain, including abnormal bleeding, heavy periods, breakthrough bleeding, painful periods, alternatives for menstrual pain. The final part of the book talks about contraception and abortion going into the history of the contraception pill, the various methods available today, how emergency contraception is different and more.
I typically read front to back but with Blood, I took a different approach for this reason. I was easily able to create a mini-study plan where I first read the chapters that I knew would quench my questions. Then, because I was curious, I read through most of the other chapters. I returned to this many times over the course of two months. The writing is quite immersive and time passed so fast when I was reading.
Dr. Gunter uses analogies to make the dry physiological intricacies accessible to the reader. Sometimes, I was reminded of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution – another fascinating book about the female body and its evolution. There is so much we just don’t know and at the same time, anyone who has been in a delivery room in some capacity knows how insane the birth of life is.
I wish this book had come out a decade ago. Not in 2024 but in 2014. I am confident I would have read this book had I seen it. Even if I would have still reached for the same prescription, I would have done it armed with information. One of my biggest learnings from reading non-fiction in the medical realm is self-advocacy and that only comes from knowledge. Blood made me think about the kind of life I want. Growing up, periods were the norm. I remember the awkwardness of menarche and the nervousness of telling my parents and girlfriends. I remember the first overnight train with my dad, the stress of white skirt school days and the blessing that layers of clothing provided in the winter. I didn’t know what was normal in those early years and school education only added absolutes and more stress. My best friend’s mom was a science teacher and I remember asking her about period length because what I was taught at school was not lining up with my reality. She was the closest thing to a doctor that I knew. Oh I love the teenage brain! My mom didn’t know any more than I did and I am so grateful that I will enter my daughter’s teenage years with much more information.
One of my biggest worries around fertility after being on birth control a long time was how long it would take to come back. I never asked this when I started the medication. After almost a decade, I had no idea what my cycles used to look like before. My tracking system was minimal and I didn’t bring any of it when I moved countries. I found this reality acknowledged by this statement:
People are sometimes on contraception for so long they may not remember what they felt like before they started.
Dr. Jen Gunter in Blood, pg 407
Blood has a beautiful message of going for comfort. Dr. Gunter lays out lots of information for the reader in every aspect of the menstrual cycle – from when it starts to when it ends, including all that can happen in between. Some of the chapters have a Q&A format where more questions than I could come up with are answered. I love the emphasis on there being nothing wrong in not wanting to have a period and no shame in taking the option that gets us just that. Birth control treats PMS, PCOS, and painful periods and the mentality of suffering in silence from generations ago should no longer be embraced.
Dr. Gunter also provides guidance. She provides a short set of questions to consider when choosing a contraception method. “Do you mind putting in some effort?” is such a good one. Effort can mean different things to different people and I love how this question is open to interpretation. Another one I liked seeing on the list was “Can you tolerate irregular bleeding?” Some people can. I learned that I can’t.
Paid leave for period pain, or menstrual leave, is an emerging workplace policy allowing employees time off for severe menstrual symptoms. This article calls working women who take these leaves as “menstruator”. That is a term that Dr. Gunter mentions in Blood. I laugh when I see it in use and know exactly what she would say to its usage.
I want to conclude my thoughts on Blood with the final lines of the book:
The menstrual cycle is a unique mechanism that supports humanity. It provides resource curation to ensure the healthiest pregnancy outcome, but at the expense of the person who menstruates. What’s more, a patriarchal society punishes you for it, via employment discrimination, the cost of menstrual products, the inability to get contraception in abortion, the cost of medications, neglect from uncaring medical providers, and insufficient funding for research. And many people try to capitalize on these very real issues. The best defense I can give you against these massive gaps is knowledge.
Dr. Jen Gunter in Blood, pg 421
A few years back, Dr. Karen Tang wrote about female reproduction in It’s Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know about Your Reproductive Health (my review) and earlier I mentioned Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon.
Reading Blood made me realize that understanding my body is not a one-time event, but an ongoing relationship. One that evolves with each phase of life. There is still so much ahead of me to learn and experience and for the first time, I feel equipped to meet that with curiosity instead of uncertainty.
I am really appreciating this moment in time where more books are being written about the female body—openly, honestly, and with the intention to inform rather than obscure. For so long, so much of this knowledge felt inaccessible or incomplete.
Have you read Dr. Gunter’s books? What are some of your favorite non-fiction books? Tell me in the comments! 🙂
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