Understanding Painful Sex + Other Stories
Every week, we corral our favorite wellness stories from around the internet—just in time for your weekend reading.
What Happens to Relationships When Sex Hurts
The Atlantic
Vulvodynia is a condition characterized by chronic pain in the vaginal area that often worsens during sex. It has a long history of misdiagnosis and mistreatment. Writer Ashley Fetters investigates the diagnosis and speaks with women who have begun lobbying for research and better treatment.
Heart Disease in Women: Age of First Period Can Impact Heart Attack Risk
Today
Though often overlooked by both physicians and patients, the age when a woman began menstruating can offer vital clues about her health later in life. A recent study found that women who started menstruating earlier or later than the US average age of twelve had an increased risk of major adverse cardiac events.
How the US Betrayed the Marshall Islands, Kindling the Next Nuclear Disaster
The Los Angeles Times
During the Cold War, the US used the Marshall Islands for detonating nuclear bombs and, later, for biological weapons testing. Then, in the 1970s, US authorities built a dome to store the toxic waste and covered it with concrete. Now all that nuclear waste—which locals call “the tomb”—is being threatened by climate change and could crack open, spilling its contents into the Pacific Ocean, according to a fifteen-month long Los Angeles Times investigation.
Flint’s Children Suffer in Class after Years of Drinking the Lead-Poisoned Water
The New York Times
In 2014 the water supply in Flint, Michigan, was switched over to the Flint River, which caused an epidemic of lead poisoning that has plagued the city and its vulnerable children ever since. Five years later, Flint still does not have clean water. And the health effects of lead’s neurotoxicity are being felt throughout the community as parents, teachers, policy makers, and health experts try to grapple with how to help the affected children.
