Scientists are finally studying women’s bodies. This is what we’re learning.

Going to the doctor can be frustrating when you’re a woman—and even more so if you’re a woman of color. 

That’s because women are more likely to be underdiagnosed with conditions from endometriosis to schizophrenia to ADHD. In the United States, Black women are almost three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white or Hispanic women. And somehow scientists still don’t have a good handle on why so many women struggle to breastfeed.

None of this is new. We’ve long known that women’s health concerns are dismissed more frequently and studied less. But the good news is that researchers are starting to fill in those gaps. Their research is yielding new biological insights—leading to better diagnoses and more targeted treatments, from menstruation to menopause.

Here’s a look at just a handful of those developments that we’ve covered in recent years.

1. Women and girls tend to experience ADHD differently.

Scientists long considered ADHD “almost exclusively as a boy disorder,” wrote Kaelyn Lynch in a January 2024 story about the unprecedented rise in ADHD diagnoses among women—which she notes nearly doubled from 2020 to 2022.

What’s behind this massive shift? Experts say it is linked, in part, to the way that ADHD often manifests in women and girls. Although ADHD is typically associated with hyperactivity, there’s also a type called inattentive ADHD, which Kaelyn writes is “characterized by disorganization, forgetfulness, and struggles with starting and staying on task.”

Girls and women tend to have inattentive ADHD and their symptoms are more likely to be mistaken for emotional or learning difficulties—if anyone notices them at all. “They’re more likely to be seen as daydreamers, or lost in the clouds,” said Julia Schechter, co-director of Duke University’s Center for Women and Girls with ADHD. “Their symptoms are just as impairing, but can fly under the radar.” The consequences, Kaelyn writes, can be severe.

(Read the full story here.)

2. Your menstrual cycle can reshape your brain.

Only about half of one percent of brain-imaging research is done in women—and that’s a real problem, writes Sanjay Mishra in a February 2024 story. This disparity is why we’re only just learning now how menstruation reshapes the brain.

That’s right. Reshapes. The. Brain. As Sanjay reported, emerging studies show that your monthly period “dramatically reshapes the regions of the brain that govern emotions, memory, behavior, and the efficiency of memory transfer.”

It’s important to note that these studies don’t prove that these changes are connected to the rollercoaster of emotions that some women experience during their periods. But experts say it highlights the urgent need for more neuroscience research in women, who are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and depression.

"It's high time to make the brain a major focus of women's health," said Julia Sacher, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, who led one of the studies.

(Read the full story here.)

3. That severe nausea may not be just ‘morning sickness.’

Most people get morning sickness during pregnancy—so no big deal, right? Well, that perception could be preventing people from getting treatment for a severe condition called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). As Sam Jones wrote in January 2024, this condition affects about 2 percent of pregnant individuals and is “characterized by severe, persistent nausea and vomiting that can be life-threatening.”

Although these symptoms can be debilitating, physicians and researchers told Sam that they’ve witnessed their peers dismiss HG as “hysteria.” So, it’s no surprise that research into how to treat it is underfunded.

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Yet that research is slowly happening. In recent years, studies have pinpointed a specific hormone linked to HG and even unlocked exactly how that hormone causes the condition. These findings could finally yield new treatments—if doctors know to prescribe them.

(Read the full story here.)

4. We finally have new tools to save lives during childbirth.

Nearly 800 people die every day worldwide from complications in pregnancy and childbirth, according to the World Health Organization. Even in the U.S. maternal mortality rates are rising, particularly among Black women. But there is hope: Cutting-edge research is giving us tools to prevent the leading causes of maternal mortality, including pre-eclampsia, anemia, and sepsis.

As Rachel Fairbank reported in July 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first blood test that can predict which patients are at risk for developing pre-eclampsia—a condition in which high blood pressure restricts blood flow so severely it can cause organ failure and death. Pre-eclampsia is hard to diagnose because it looks like so many other disorders that are common during pregnancy, Rachel writes—so this new test could really make a difference.

Researchers have also found a surprisingly simple solution for anemia, which can cause heavy bleeding during childbirth: iron delivered via IV. Although this has traditionally been treated with oral iron supplements, researchers have shown that one 15-minute IV drip provides the equivalent of four tablets a day for four weeks.

Finally, doctors have long administered the antibiotic azithromycin during cesarean sections to reduce infections that can lead to sepsis. But clinical trials have shown recently that administering a single dose of the drug during a vaginal labor can also reduce the risk of postpartum sepsis by one-third.

(Read our full story about pre-eclampsia here—and our story about anemia and sepsis research here.)

5. Frozen shoulder syndrome is real.

Frozen shoulder syndrome is pretty much what it sounds like: a condition in which the connective tissue in your shoulders becomes inflamed to the point where you can’t move. This painful condition can last for years yet isn’t well understood—perhaps because three-quarters of the people who suffer from it are female, wrote Erin Blakemore in a November 2023 story.

Menopause seems to be a factor. As Erin reports, researchers are investigating whether the joint pain that some 50 percent of women experience during menopause might be tied to the drop in estrogen in their bodies. One recent study suggests that people who undergo hormone therapy to boost estrogen levels are less likely to be diagnosed with frozen shoulder syndrome.

This research is still in the early stages, Erin cautions. But “it’s a first foray into a place where few researchers have gone before. And for those hurtling toward (or experiencing) menopause, it can’t come a moment too soon.”

(Read the full story here.)

6. A cure for hot flashes might finally be in reach.

Even more exciting is that researchers finally have figured out how the plummeting levels of estrogen during menopause cause hot flashes, Meryl Davids Landau reported in a December 2022 story.

Up to 80 percent of women experience this debilitating symptom, she wrote—“often accompanied by sweating, heart palpitations, dizziness, fatigue, and/or anxiety.” Hot flashes, which are particularly pronounced in Black people and Native Americans, strike several times a day and can occur for an average of four years.

Mounting research has shown that the drop in estrogen affects a particular bundle of neurons—in the hypothalamus of the brain—that regulate temperature, causing them to fire inappropriately. Now companies are testing drugs that would block those neurons and stop hot flashes for once and for all.

Such drug development is long overdue, Genevieve Neal-Perry, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine told Meryl: Since nearly all women who reach midlife experience hot flashes, she said, “the fact that we haven’t understood the biology of hot flashes until the last decade is pretty amazing.”

(Read the full story here—and learn more about what scientists are piecing together about menopause.)