391. Say It Out Loud: PCOS Gets a New Name, PMDD Gets Real, and Your Ovaries Deserve Better

Kelly Casperson (0:03)

Welcome to You Are Not Broken, the podcast that challenges everything we've been taught about midlife hormones and sexuality. I'm Dr. Kelly Casperson, board certified urologist, author, and a leading voice in women's sexual and hormone health. Enjoy the show.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the You Are Not Broken podcast. Today, we're going to have on my friend, Dr. Sameena Rahman, who's a practicing gynecologist in the Chicagoland area. Welcome to the podcast.

Sameena Rahman (0:26)

Woohoo! Thanks, Carol. So excited to be here.

Kelly Casperson (0:28)

Dude, so we hung out last when I was on book tour last fall, we did an event and literally, it was a big event, over 100 people were there and literally everybody I talked to was like, I'm Dr. Rahman's patient. I'm Dr. Rahman's patient. And we're all dialed in. And so I go up on stage and I'm giving my thing and I ask for a show of hands of who's on testosterone in the room. Like it had to have been 60 or 70 percent of the women in the room raise their hands.

And I'm like, this is an educated, empowered group that's actually getting care.

Sameena Rahman (0:59)

Yeah, that's true. Thank you. I'm spreading the word as much as I can. It's funny because Mary Claire was on her tour last week in Chicago land and she said something, introduced me and then she was like, at the end, Kristy DeSapri and Sameena Rahman will answer your questions and then she left at the back door. So we got this line of people that were, I was like, oh, I wish I would have wrote my cards. You're like, yeah.

Kelly Casperson (1:25)

Oh, God. Yeah.

Sameena Rahman (1:27)

I was just came to support my friend and this happened.

Kelly Casperson (1:30)

And tell the story of our event that we did in Chicago.

We gave away my book in goodie bags. We already had it and you were Ubering home. Tell that story because it's so good.

Sameena Rahman (1:41)

Crazy. This lady that she picked me up on the Uber and she's like, I come to this place because it was an event space. She goes, I pick up people here all the time. What was your event about? And I was like, oh, it was a menopalooza. We were talking about menopause and she goes, what? And I said, well, we talked about menopause and then she goes, you know, I have, she's got hot flashes. She's had a hysterectomy.

She is taking care of her kids and grandkids and all these things. And she's just exhausted. She said, I just have been trying to find a doctor to help me, but I don't have any answers. And I pulled out your book. I said, I got you the, I got you the Menopause Bible here. You know, she was like, and that literally started crying. She literally was in tears. She was like, as I gave her the Menopause moment, and I said, it's my friend's book. It has everything you need to know to get started. I said, I gave her my information. I gave her like every Menopause doctor that I knew that could maybe help her. And she was in tears. And she was like, I prayed this morning. I prayed on it. I prayed that I could get some help. Because some people just, she was black and she never had gotten like access to care and people she had been dismissed before. So just all the things were happening at once. And she was like, you're like my angel. And I was like, yeah, me and Kelly.

Kelly Casperson (2:52)

Incredible story. Do you think there's a, I think there's a reckoning coming. And this is UK data. I haven't seen US data. Fill me in if we have it.

Of all the women who get oophorectomies for non-surgical reasons in the UK, 5% are put on hormone therapy.

Sameena Rahman (3:10)

Crazy, actually.

Kelly Casperson (3:11)

100, just to take contrast, 100% of men who have their testicles removed, even for cancer, are put on testosterone. 100%. Otherwise, it's medical malpractice.

Sameena Rahman (3:20)

Yeah. And I'm sure it's half of that for like black women who get hysterectomies and oophorectomies at higher rates, right? So like, it's pretty significant, I think. And I think that, yeah, there's a reckoning is happening, right?

Kelly Casperson (3:31)

There's a reckoning coming. Like, are you kidding me? In 2026, we're still castrating. Like, there's a crazy word is there isn't actually a female word for castration, because the word castration means removal of a male animal's testicles, because like farming, basically, like animal husbandry is where the word castration came from. And it is removal of male animals, gonads. There is not a besides oophorectomy. There is not a female castration word. I think people get super cringy when we say castration, but we're like, you come up with a different word than of what this is.