This episode features Nancy King Reame, Professor Emerita at Columbia University's School of Nursing, who tells an overlooked and really extraordinary story about how her laboratory was set up in the early eighties to test tampons for absorbency.

Back then tampons were not standardized - think about it this way: when you go out to buy sunscreen, you can get an SPF in 15, 30, 50 - and you know what you’re getting. Until Nancy came along, there was no scale for tampons that would allow women to know just how absorbent any given product was, relative to another. And this mattered because super absorbent tampons were linked to an outbreak of toxic shock syndrome in the late seventies and early eighties, which killed dozens of women and made hundreds sick. Nancy’s research contributed to the scale you’ll see printed on the side of every box of tampons today. And the story of how that happened is wildly fascinating.
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Actually Nancy doesn’t just tell one story. These anecdotes during our conversation were really eye-opening:

• The first time Nancy saw the syngina, a mechanism for testing tampons.
• Why menstrual products were tested with blue-dyed salt water instead of blood.
• The ‘tampon task force’, assembled by the FDA: Nancy was one of the few women in the room, which was mostly filled with men in suits- representatives from the tampon industry.
• Esther Rome, co-founder of the Boston Women’s Health Collective, which published ‘Our Bodies Ourselves,’ - she shocked the men around the table by talking about ‘free bleeding.’

Nancy’s body of work in women’s health spans about 40 years, and while we talked about how far things have come, she was also strident on what hasn’t changed at all, and the work that still needs to be done on tampon safety. I’ve included some links at the end of this email for a deeper dive on this topic if you're interested.

You'll hear an announcement of a new sponsor in this episode: Raesyn Footwear. I bought a pair of Raesyn's myself, and zip around in them everywhere, clocking in those steps. Raesyn is based in Baltimore, and, like Overlooked, is woman-owned and run. As you know, Overlooked is an independent podcast, so their support makes a huge difference to us - you can learn more about their footwear here.​

Last week I attended two events in New York, and learned a ton about health and healthcare. The first was called ‘The Power of X’ at Cure, a life sciences innovation center, and among the really great panels I heard on various aspects of women's health, this one really blew me away.

Listen, women's bone health is not sexy - and maybe that's why it's so overlooked. But it’s one of those things that you totally take for granted until you lose it. And - there’s a mortality rate associated with women breaking their hips, so what more reason do we need to take this seriously, and much earlier than we think. This panel brought a sense of urgency and agency to the topic of women's bone health and I was drinking from the cool aid by the end. There’s going to be more on Overlooked about bone health this year, so if you have questions or stories to share - email me: hello@overlookedpod.com​

I also attended STAT’s conference, which was broader than women’s health and much nerdier. I met one of my favorite science communicators there and allowed myself a moment to fan girl:

​Dr Noc was part of a panel of science communicators who are doing the tough work of making science accessible on platforms like Instagram. They talked about trust in science and medicine, misinformation, and the idea that uncertainty in science is central, and not something to be shied away from. I came away inspired and fortified.

The c-section episode is still reverberating: after Stephanie Gorton listened, she emailed me and sent this fantastic piece.

Stephanie bought her health records so she could piece together the story of the birth of her second child, helped along by her midwife. Stephanie is an author and a previous guest on Overlooked - she talked about the history of birth control in the US, and you can listen to that episode here.

For a deeper dive on tampon safety, here are those links:

• ​Nancy King Reame’s profile​
• ​What is toxic shock syndrome, from The Cleveland Clinic​
• ​Toxic shock syndrome, tampons and laboratory standard–setting, by Shara Vostral​

Wishing you the best of health,

Golda
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