‘You should be able to pick your vulva out in a line-up’ and other essential medical facts

There is so much excellent information being conveyed by Dr Doireann O’Leary’s guests on subjects relating to women’s health that I spent the first season of her podcast silently imploring the universe to grant her a console so she could work on the sound levels.

The good news is that season three sees Dr Doireann’s Podcast pulling up its production socks to line up with the content hem, and I no longer have to hover over the volume button as I did for early episodes.

Not much else has changed over the three seasons of the podcast’s lifespan, with the format remaining: Dr Doireann inviting experts in specific fields of women’s health to drop their knowledge. Her style is to stay largely out of the way of her interlocutor, though she does serve as a conduit for questions from her 184,000 Instagram followers.

The experts are the point: from Botox to bariatric medicine, what I have learned from Dr Doireann’s guests is how much I still have to learn about the workings of my own body. (Also, what fillers could do for me.)

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Did you know, for example, that even though one in six women have irritable bowel syndrome, there’s an even more common condition called functional dyspepsia – otherwise known as a dicky belly – and you, reading this, thought the bloating was just something you had to live with but you don’t. And that there’s an overemphasis on Kegels, and that gluten can be really good for your gut bacteria, and that tea is a bladder irritant? These are among the pearls dropped by Dr Doireann’s guests, as they storm, scorched-earth style, through woo-ness to get to evidence-based medicine.

From consultant surgeon Ms Eilis Fizgerald, whose explanation of Botox and fillers was a knowledgeable, judgment-free highlight of season one, to consultant paediatrician Dr Niamh Lynch’s timely pointers on anxiety in children, to Dr Mick Crotty whose expertise on bariatric medicine has altered my understanding of obesity permanently, these are people worth your time.

And their eloquence can be a delight. Did you ever hear your gut bacteria likened to a meadow of wildflowers before? Or your vaginal walls to a wilting rose petal? Flowers are everywhere in medicine, it turns out, and, to inappropriately stretch a metaphor, it’s a rare treat to stop and smell them.

Dr Doireann is the yes woman behind it all – this is not a podcast to come to for a deep interrogation of Western medicine nor of the invited guests. Rather, O’Leary curates her speakers and hands them the mic, often to great effect, while she herself rarely interjects beyond agreement. Not every physician is an audio superstar, however: occasionally, you find yourself tuning out from a doctor clearly weary explaining the same thing all over again, this time without even the patient present.

But then, you get gems like pelvic floor physiotherapist Ms Shalini Wiseman. “You should be able to pick your vulva out in a line-up,” she announces scoldingly, and once you get past the image of a vulva line-up, you see her point. We don’t know our own vulvas. We owe Dr Doireann’s Podcast for the introduction.