Women’s health must be taken more seriously and women must be empowered to seek help for any changes in their health, a former breast cancer surgeon has said.<\/p>\n
Dr Liz O’Riordan, who has had breast cancer three times, was a keynote speaker at the Let’s Talk Women Health event held at The Hold in Ipswich on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The event, attended by more than 300 people, aimed to dispel myths and online misinformation as well as connect women with experts in pregnancy, fertility, menopause, endometriosis and neurodiversity.<\/p>\n
She said: \u00ab\u00a0We are now realising we deserve more and for me it’s teaching women what to say so they get taken seriously.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
O’Riordan previously worked at Ipswich Hospital and was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 at the age of 40 and underwent a mastectomy.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Women on the whole – I wasn’t – aren’t very good at standing up for ourselves.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Due to misinformation being \u00ab\u00a0everywhere\u00a0\u00bb, she said women are left questioning who to turn to for reliable resources.<\/p>\n
She said: \u00ab\u00a0You can’t get easy access to your doctors. It’s doctors like me who are creating content trying to breach that space and help people come to us and not Chat GPT.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0I think it’s really important women get together and know they are not alone.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Amy Peckham-Driver, co-creator of the event, which is in its second year, said she wanted to bring women together to have conversations that need to be destigmatised.<\/p>\n
She said: \u00ab\u00a0Up until the 90s, women were largely excluded from medical research. We are lightyears behind where we should be in understanding women’s bodies, health conditions and the challenges we face.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Peckham-Driver, who is from Needham Market in Suffolk, was diagnosed with deep infiltrating endometriosis after she was told her pain was down to irritable bowel syndrome or anxiety.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Women’s health is not just a woman’s responsibility. This is for their partners, carers, colleagues, managers, anybody… so they can better support the people that they care about,\u00a0\u00bb she said.<\/p>\n
Julia Endacott works as a women’s health physiotherapist and finished radiotherapy for breast cancer two weeks ago. As soon as she saw O’Riordan was headlining the event, she grabbed a ticket.<\/p>\n
She said: \u00ab\u00a0I think the attendance says it all, that it was a sellout. I think people are wanting this kind of thing and getting health advice and to have someone like Liz dispel myths.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Unless you’re hearing it from the professionals, you can be misguided.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0It’s much better you got to the doctor and they reassure you than have a thing you might sit on and not get support for.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Women’s health must be taken more seriously and women must be empowered to seek help for any changes in their health, a former breast cancer surgeon has said. Dr Liz O’Riordan, who has had breast cancer three times, was a keynote speaker at the Let’s Talk Women Health event held at The Hold in Ipswich […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}