99 Fun Facts About Women's Health

What is the median length of the human menstrual cycle?

28 days is the median, and the classic birth control pill pack is built around it: three weeks of hormone pills, then a week off or on blank pills.

Menopause is confirmed only once a woman has gone how long without a period?

One year without a period is the test, so menopause can only be dated in hindsight; in the United States it arrives in a woman's early fifties on average.

In which country was the first baby conceived by in vitro fertilisation born, in 1978?

England: Louise Brown was born in Oldham even though Britain's Medical Research Council had refused to fund the research, which a private donation kept alive.

Which birth control campaigner, by then in her seventies, found the backers who got the first contraceptive pill developed?

Margaret Sanger found biologist Gregory Pincus in 1951, brought in heiress Katharine McCormick to pay for his research, and lived to see the FDA approve the pill as a contraceptive in 1960.

Who was the first woman to earn a US medical degree, at Geneva Medical College in 1849?

Elizabeth Blackwell got in only because the faculty put her admission to a vote of the male students, who said yes as a joke; in 1857 she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

The doctor who devised the ten-point newborn health check in 1952 practised which specialty?

Anesthesiology: she had trained as a surgeon, but her mentor steered her into the young specialty, warning that the women surgeons he had trained struggled to make a living.

Which newborn check, scored out of 10 at one and five minutes after birth, is named after the doctor who devised it?

The Apgar score is a surname, not an acronym: a Denver resident turned Virginia Apgar's name into the memory aid Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration about a decade later.

The Pap smear used to screen for cervical cancer is named after a physician of which nationality?

Greek-born Georgios Papanikolaou reported in 1928 that cancer cells could be spotted in vaginal smears, but the finding went largely unnoticed until he published again in the 1940s.

Almost all cases of cervical cancer are linked to infection with which virus?

Human papillomavirus is so common that almost all sexually active people catch it at some point; the immune system usually clears it, and only a persistent infection can lead to cancer.

Which vaccine, approved in 2006, was the first to protect against the virus behind most cervical cancers?

Gardasil began as a three-dose course, but in 2022 the World Health Organization's advisers concluded that a single dose gives comparable protection.

Which condition affects about one in ten women of reproductive age, often causing severe period pain and taking years to diagnose?

Endometriosis, in which tissue like the womb's lining grows elsewhere in the body, is slow to be diagnosed partly because severe period pain is so often dismissed as normal.

Which condition is the most common hormonal disorder in women of reproductive age?

Polycystic ovary syndrome was given a new name in 2026, partly because its 'cysts' are not true cysts but egg follicles that have stopped growing.

About 90% of ectopic pregnancies implant in which part of the body?

Fallopian tube: as the embryo grows it can burst the tube and cause major internal bleeding, which is why an ectopic pregnancy is treated as an emergency.

Which pregnancy complication is marked by new high blood pressure and protein in the urine, usually after 20 weeks?

Pre-eclampsia has no cure while the pregnancy lasts; symptoms usually ease once the baby is born, so in serious cases doctors bring the delivery forward.

Gestational diabetes usually goes away after the birth but raises the mother's later risk of which condition?

Type 2 diabetes: the pregnancy hormones that make the body less able to use insulin are gone after the birth, but the mother stays more likely to develop type 2 later in life.

Folic acid is taken in pregnancy mainly to reduce the risk of which group of birth abnormalities?

Neural tube defects such as spina bifida arise in the first weeks of pregnancy, often before a woman knows she is pregnant, which is why folic acid is added to bread and cereals.

Which hormone drives contractions in childbirth and triggers the release of milk during breastfeeding?

Oxytocin works by positive feedback: each contraction signals the brain to release more of it, which makes the next contractions stronger and more frequent.

What name is given to the irregular 'practice' contractions that can start weeks before real labour?

Braxton Hicks contractions, described by an English doctor of that name in 1872, can be mistaken for labour but usually fade with rest and a drink of water.

The first milk a mother produces in the days after delivery, rich in antibodies, is called what?

Colostrum is thick, golden yellow and so concentrated that a newborn, whose digestive system is still tiny, needs only a very small amount at each feed.

Which condition, affecting at least one in ten new mothers, is suspected when low mood lasts beyond two weeks after a birth?

Postpartum depression is not only a mother's illness: fathers and partners can develop depression after a baby arrives too.

Which organ takes its name from the Latin word for a flat cake?

The placenta was named by the 16th-century Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo, who called it a 'uterine cake' because of its round, flat shape.

The human uterus is usually described as being the shape of which fruit?

A pear, turned upside down and roughly the size of a fist; by the end of pregnancy it has stretched to many times that size.

Which human cell is among the body's largest, at about a tenth of a millimetre across?

The ovum is thought never to be replaced: a girl is born with her eggs already formed, and their number falls as she gets older.

A surge in which hormone triggers ovulation, the release of an egg from the ovary?

Luteinizing hormone is what home ovulation tests look for in urine: a positive result means an egg should be released within the next day or so.

Home pregnancy tests work by detecting which hormone in urine?

Human chorionic gonadotropin appears only once a fertilised egg has attached to the wall of the womb, so finding it in urine signals a pregnancy; levels then climb fast for about ten weeks.

The 'meno' in menopause comes from the Greek word for what?

Month: French doctors coined the word in the early 19th century from the Greek for 'month' and 'a cessation'; English speakers had been calling it the change of life.

Which protein does a woman's skin lose about 30% of in the first five years after menopause?

Collagen keeps skin firm, so its sudden fall as hormone levels drop at menopause is why skin can turn thinner, slacker and quicker to wrinkle.

Heavy periods are a common cause of a deficiency in which mineral?

Iron is lost with blood, so women aged 19 to 50 are advised to get 18 mg a day, more than twice the 8 mg recommended from 51 onwards.

The menopause drug Premarin is made from hormones in the urine of which pregnant animals?

Horses: Premarin's estrogens are still purified from pregnant mares' urine, and it was the pill tested in the Women's Health Initiative, whose 2002 results led many women to give up hormone therapy.

Which agency launched the Women's Health Initiative, a study of postmenopausal women, in 1991?

The NIH set it up partly to test whether hormone therapy protected older women's hearts; instead the combined-pill trial was stopped early in 2002 after showing more heart problems, strokes and breast cancers.

Men account for roughly what share of breast cancer cases?

About 1%: men have a small amount of breast tissue where cancer can start, and they tend to be diagnosed at an older age than women.

Geneticist Mary-Claire King's team located which gene in 1990, showing that breast cancer risk can be inherited?

BRCA1 capped nearly two decades of family studies that many scientists doubted; King also used genetics to reunite Argentine families with children stolen under the military dictatorship.

What colour were the ribbons activist Charlotte Haley handed out in 1991, before pink became breast cancer's symbol?

Peach: when Self magazine and Estée Lauder asked to use her ribbon, Haley refused to join a commercial campaign, so they switched the colour to pink.

Mammography examines the breast using which type of radiation?

Low-energy X-rays are used, and the breast is pressed flat between two plates because thinner, evened-out tissue gives a clearer picture.

Where were the cells that became the immortal HeLa line taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951?

Johns Hopkins in Baltimore was one of the few hospitals then treating poor Black patients; its researcher George Gey found that her cells, unlike every earlier sample, kept dividing instead of dying.

Lupus takes its name from the Latin word for which animal?

Wolf: the name is said to come from skin sores that ate into the flesh like a wolf's bite, and the disease strikes women of childbearing age about nine times as often as men.

Many women assume it is cancer, but which condition is the number one killer of women in the United States?

Heart disease is easier to miss in women, because a heart attack may bring nausea, breathlessness or pain in the neck as well as the classic crushing chest pain.

About half of all women will at some point get which condition, far more common in women than in men?

Urinary tract infection: a woman's urethra is shorter than a man's and sits closer to where the bacteria come from, so germs such as E. coli reach the bladder more easily.

Vaginal yeast infections are typically caused by which species?

Candida albicans normally lives in the body in small numbers without causing trouble; a course of antibiotics can kill the bacteria that keep it in check and let it overgrow.

Toxic shock syndrome became widely known in the 1980s through its association with which product?

High-absorbency tampons were linked to the 1980 outbreak, but the syndrome is not only a tampon illness: it can also follow surgery, burns and skin infections, in men and children too.

Which reusable period product, often seen as a modern invention, was already on sale in the late 1930s?

The menstrual cup was patented in 1937 by Leona Chalmers, who made it of vulcanised rubber, but wartime rubber shortages stalled production and it stayed a niche product for decades.

Which period-product brand grew out of the cardboard applicator design Earle Haas patented in the early 1930s?

Tampax: Haas sold the patent to a Denver businesswoman, who founded the company and sewed the first batches herself.

Pelvic floor exercises are commonly known by the name of which American gynecologist, who described them in 1948?

Arnold Kegel's squeezes strengthen the pelvic floor muscles that pregnancy and childbirth can weaken, which is why they are recommended for bladder leaks.

Which people have the world's highest twin-birth rate, about 45–50 sets per 1,000 births?

The Yoruba of southwest Nigeria include the town of Igbo-Ora, nicknamed the twin capital of the world; one unproven theory credits a diet rich in yams.

Which chromosomal disorder occurs when a female's cells have only one X chromosome instead of two?

Turner syndrome most often shows up as short stature, and because the ovaries usually stop working early, most girls go through puberty only with hormone treatment.

Which royal was hospitalised with hyperemesis gravidarum during her first pregnancy?

Catherine, Princess of Wales, was then the Duchess of Cambridge, and her stay in a London hospital in December 2012 forced the palace to announce the pregnancy before the twelve-week mark.

Osteoporosis is called a 'silent disease' because its first sign is often what?

A broken bone is often the first warning, because thinning bones cause no pain; the word itself joins the Greek for 'bone' and 'pore'.

An osteoporosis T-score compares a patient's bone density with that of whom?

A healthy young adult is the yardstick because bone mass is at its peak then; a score 2.5 or more below that mark means osteoporosis, and the comparison with one's own age group is a separate Z-score.

Which queen was given chloroform for the births of her eighth and ninth children?

Queen Victoria was given it in 1853 and 1857 by Dr John Snow, who also traced London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump; her example helped win acceptance for pain relief in childbirth.

Cancer of which organ kills more American women each year than breast cancer does?

The lungs overtook the breast as the deadliest cancer site for American women in 1987 and have stayed there since. For men, they had held that grim lead since the early 1950s.

Jogbra, a pioneering sports bra of 1977, was first made by stitching together two of which item?

Jockstraps were sewn into the first one in a University of Vermont costume shop, after someone suggested that women runners needed one for the chest. An original is now bronzed and on display there.

Which actress's 2013 essay about her preventive mastectomy sent genetic testing referrals soaring?

Angelina Jolie wrote in The New York Times that she carried a faulty gene and had lost close relatives to cancer. Testing referrals went on to double in the UK and triple in Australia.

In the United States, National Women's Health Week begins each May on which holiday?

Mother's Day opens the week, which the federal Office on Women's Health uses to urge women of all ages to put their own physical and mental wellbeing first for once.

Singer Selena Gomez, who has lupus, received which organ from her friend Francia Raisa in 2017?

A kidney from Raisa replaced her own, damaged by lupus, a disease that affects women of childbearing age about nine times as often as men. Gomez broke the news on Instagram.

Besides humans, which of these animals is known to live for decades after going through menopause?

Killer whales are among the few animals that outlive their fertility by decades. The short list is mostly their relatives: belugas, narwhals and short-finned pilot whales.

Which country became the first in the world to make period products free to anyone who needs them?

Scotland has required its public bodies to supply them free since August 2022, after a campaign led by the politician Monica Lennon won the backing of every party in parliament.

Which virus was declared a global emergency in 2016 after being linked to babies born with small heads?

Zika gives most adults a mild illness or none at all, but when mosquitoes spread it among pregnant women in Brazil, more than 3,500 cases of microcephaly were reported within a few months.

Pregnant women are advised to let someone else empty the cat's litter tray to avoid which infection?

Toxoplasmosis is harmless to most healthy adults, but a first infection during pregnancy can pass to the unborn baby. Undercooked meat and unwashed vegetables spread it too.

Which First Lady's openness about her 1974 mastectomy sent American women rushing for breast checks?

Betty Ford had the operation weeks after moving into the White House. So many women then examined themselves that reported cases jumped, a rise nicknamed the Betty Ford blip.

Frances Kelsey of the FDA was honoured by President Kennedy for blocking which morning-sickness drug?

Thalidomide was already on sale in more than 20 countries when Kelsey asked for proof that it was safe, then asked again every 60 days. In late 1961 it was linked to babies across Europe being born with severe deformities.

The 1983 death of which singer and drummer first brought anorexia nervosa to wide public attention?

Karen Carpenter died at 32 after years of the illness, which few people had heard of before. Her family set up a foundation in her name to fund research into eating disorders.

Which doctor slashed childbed fever deaths at a Vienna clinic in 1847 by making staff wash their hands?

Ignaz Semmelweis saw deaths on the doctors' ward fall from 18% to under 2% once staff scrubbed with chlorinated lime. Offended colleagues mocked him, and he ended his days in an asylum.

Which feminist writer died of childbed fever days after giving birth to the future author of Frankenstein?

Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, died at 38, eleven days after the birth of the daughter who became Mary Shelley.

Which childbirth instrument did the Chamberlen family of surgeons keep secret for about 150 years?

Forceps let the Chamberlens deliver live babies where rivals failed, which won them royal patients. A set of their tools turned up in the attic of a family house in 1813.

Which diagnosis, dropped by American psychiatry in 1980, was named after the ancient word for the womb?

Hysteria comes from hystera, and for centuries doctors blamed women's fits, faints and low spirits on a womb that wandered around the body.

The job title 'midwife' comes from Middle English words that literally mean what?

With woman is the literal sense: mid meant with and wif meant woman. The title describes the person at the bedside, not the one in labour, which is why men who do the job are midwives too.

Unpasteurised soft cheeses are off the menu in pregnancy mainly because of which bacterium?

Listeria gives most pregnant women nothing worse than a mild, flu-like illness, yet it can reach the baby and cause miscarriage or stillbirth. Yogurt and cottage cheese are considered safe.

Hashimoto's disease, far more common in women than in men, attacks which gland?

The thyroid is slowly worn down by the body's own immune system in Hashimoto's, leaving too little of the hormone that sets the body's pace. A Japanese physician first described it in 1912.

Pregnant women are advised not to eat shark or swordfish because of high levels of which metal?

Mercury builds up in long-lived hunters at the top of the food chain and is especially toxic to a developing baby. King mackerel and tilefish are on the same avoid list.

Almost two-thirds of the Americans living with which brain disease are women?

Alzheimer's carries a lifetime risk of about one in five for a woman of 45, double the one in ten faced by a man of the same age.

The ACL, which female athletes tear up to eight times as often as male ones, is a ligament in which joint?

The knee takes the strain in sports full of cutting and jumping. In US college data, three of the four sports with the highest ACL injury rates were women's: gymnastics, basketball and soccer.

Which mild infection, once called German measles, can leave a baby deaf or blind if caught early in pregnancy?

Rubella is the reason pregnant women are tested for immunity early on. Thanks to vaccination, the United States was able to declare the disease eliminated in 2004.

What is usually the first visible sign that a girl has started puberty?

Breast buds, small firm lumps under the nipple, come first, and it is normal for one side to start before the other. Periods typically follow about two years later.

Wine affects a woman more than a man of the same weight, largely because her body holds less what?

Water dilutes whatever a person drinks, and pound for pound women carry less of it. The same glass therefore leaves a stronger concentration in a woman's bloodstream.

Takotsubo syndrome, seen mostly in women past menopause, is named after a Japanese trap for which sea creature?

Octopus pots have a narrow neck and a round belly, the shape the left ventricle balloons into during an attack. About nine in ten patients are women, often after a sudden shock or loss.

In 2013 the FDA halved the women's dose of which sleeping pill, because women clear it more slowly?

Ambien, or zolpidem, went from 10 mg to 5 mg for women after driving tests showed that many were still impaired the next morning. Doctors were told only to consider the lower dose for men.

At which stage of life do a woman's ovaries hold the most eggs they will ever contain?

As a fetus about halfway through pregnancy, a girl has four to seven million egg follicles. The count is already falling when she is born and is down to around half a million by puberty.

Kangaroo care, holding a premature baby skin to skin, began in 1978 at a hospital in which country?

Colombia's Edgar Rey Sanabria tried it in Bogotá because his overcrowded unit was short of incubators and staff. The World Health Organization now publishes a guide to the method.

Which non-cancerous growths in the muscular wall of the womb affect as many as four in five women by age 50?

Fibroids need the hormones of the fertile years to grow, so they usually shrink after menopause. Most women who have them never notice any symptoms.

Which birth companion, offering support but not medical care, takes her title from an old word for a servant-woman?

Doula is a modern borrowing, coined by an anthropologist around 1970. Trials link this kind of continuous support during labour with shorter deliveries and fewer caesareans.

Isotretinoin, a drug so harmful in pregnancy that US patients must join a registry, treats which skin problem?

Acne that resists other treatment is its main use. Under the iPLEDGE programme, women who could conceive need two negative pregnancy tests before starting and another before each prescription.

Lydia Pinkham's 19th-century tonic for 'female complaints' got much of its kick from which ingredient?

Alcohol made up about a fifth of her Vegetable Compound, a herbal recipe doctors dismissed as quackery. It sold especially well during Prohibition, when a bottle was a legal 40-proof drink.

The first large-scale human trial of the contraceptive pill began in 1956 in which US-governed territory?

Puerto Rico hosted the trial from April 1956 in Río Piedras, led by Celso-Ramón García and Edris Rice-Wray. Four years later the FDA approved the same drug, Enovid, for birth control.

Which skin condition, brown patches on the face brought on by hormones and sun, is nicknamed the mask of pregnancy?

Melasma usually fades by itself within several months of the birth, and the contraceptive pill can set off the same patches. Even a little sunshine can bring them back.

Which craving for non-foods such as ice, chalk or clay, common in pregnancy, is named after the Latin for magpie?

Pica borrows the magpie's Latin name because folklore held that the bird would eat almost anything. It is seen most often in pregnant women and small children, and often fades without treatment.

The Hogben pregnancy test, standard until the 1960s, injected a woman's urine into which amphibian?

Clawed frog females from Africa lay eggs within 8 to 12 hours of a dose of a pregnant woman's urine. Unlike the rabbits used before them, they did not have to be cut open to read the result.

The bestselling handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves grew out of a 1969 women's health workshop in which US city?

Boston's Emmanuel College hosted the workshop, and the women who met there wrote up what they wished they had been told. Their booklet sold 250,000 copies across the region with no advertising.

Which spinal condition, often spotted during the teenage growth spurt, is diagnosed more in girls than boys?

Scoliosis is a sideways curve of the spine. Mild curves are about as common in boys, but girls' curves are far more likely to worsen enough to need treatment. A simple forward-bend check helps spot it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman attacked the 'rest cure' doctors imposed on women in which 1892 short story?

The Yellow Wallpaper drew on Gilman's own treatment by the neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, who prescribed bed rest and banned reading and writing. She sent him a copy and never got a reply.

Fernand Lamaze based his childbirth breathing method on techniques he saw during a 1950s visit to which country?

The Soviet Union's maternity wards were already coaching women to breathe and relax through labour. Lamaze, a French obstetrician, took the idea home and made it famous as an alternative to drugs.

A baby's cells can live on in a woman's body for decades, a phenomenon named after which mythical hybrid?

The Chimera, a monster stitched together from several animals, gave its name to microchimerism. Researchers still cannot say whether the leftover cells harm a woman, help repair her tissues or do nothing.

Which traditional word names the moment a pregnant woman first feels her baby move, at about 18 to 20 weeks?

Quickening can feel like a light tapping or fluttering and is easily mistaken for wind or hunger pangs. Many legal traditions once treated it as the turning point in the status of the unborn child.

Which bacteria, relatives of those in live yogurt, make up over 90% of the microbes in a healthy vagina?

Lactobacilli act as gatekeepers, turning out lactic acid that keeps conditions too sour for most harmful microbes. A German gynaecologist, Albert Döderlein, first described them in 1892.

Tennis star Venus Williams pulled out of the 2011 US Open after being diagnosed with which autoimmune disease?

Sjögren's syndrome dries out the eyes and mouth, brings fatigue and joint pain, and is far more common in women than in men. Williams later climbed back into the world's top five.

Which physiologist won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing in vitro fertilisation?

Robert Edwards could not attend the ceremony, so his wife and fellow scientist Ruth Fowler Edwards collected the prize. His partner in the work, the surgeon Patrick Steptoe, had died in 1988.

In 2018 New York City took down a statue of which surgeon, who had operated on enslaved women without pain relief?

J. Marion Sims, long called the father of gynaecology, perfected a fistula repair in the 1840s on Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey, enslaved women who could not refuse. The statue had stood for 124 years.

Ian Donald built the world's first obstetric ultrasound machine as a professor in which British city?

Glasgow's heavy industry gave Donald the idea: on a tour of a boiler works he saw ultrasound being used to find cracks in welds. His team went on to publish the first scan image of an unborn baby.

Period cramps are driven by which hormone-like chemicals, whose production ibuprofen blocks?

Prostaglandins make the muscle of the womb tighten and relax, and an excess means worse cramps, sometimes with nausea. That is why anti-inflammatory painkillers, which cut their production, work well for period pain.

Kotex pads were created to use up a wood-pulp bandage material left over from which war?

World War I left Kimberly-Clark with stocks of cellucotton, a wood-pulp fibre it had been making for surgical dressings. The company relaunched it as Kotex in 1920.