And that's the hard thing, I think, for modern obstetrics to get its head around. Modern obstetrics comes at birth from a problem solving, slightly masculine, patriarchal angle, if I might say. And what needs to be done is not like, what can we do to fix this problem?
Because if you inject a female African clawed frog with the urine of a woman who's pregnant, she will lay eggs within a couple hours. So obstetricians actually used to have tanks these frogs in their office. And a lot of them were let go.
And you think where we are now you think, actually, it's quite complicated, isn't it, to try and think how can we keep all those wonderful advances, those lifesaving advances of modern obstetrics , but somehow get back to the roots of birth and bring back more of that loving touch in birth where a woman is brought comfort and nurture with the backup, the medical backup, in the background?
What is an OB/GYN for anyone that doesn't know? An OB/GYN is a doctor who specializes in obstetrics , so delivering babies, and gynecology. So, your gynecologist has never been taught about the clitoris, about the vulva, about sexual health, about sexual pain, about libido,
And in a nutshell, it worked. We published the findings in the "Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology," and pain intensity fell. Pain duration fell. PMS, like bloating and water retention and moodiness, improved as well.
Earl on, when you're describing this course. And I went and I found basically the only obstetricians that were in the right combination of brilliant visionary status
stained black from picking berries, seizing from organophosphate poisoning. And I saw an array of fetal malformations in their busy obstetrics ward that I hadn't seen during my previous training. And so there it was really the dark side of farming that I was exposed to.
I called the South African Heritage Resource Agency, because there's actually cell phone coverage at the site, to get permission to take it out. Read a textbook. It's called the obstetric hypothesis.
Earl on, when you're describing this course. Said well it's the only time of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists convention in Vegas.
Mina: : Dr. Turek is director of The Turek Clinic, a men's health clinic in San Francisco. He is a former professor of urology, obstetrics and gynecology at the UCSF and held the Academy of Medical Educators Endowed Chair in Urology Education.
So some 2,892 deaths in that area in 2015. And also, I found that we have opened up an obstetric hospital with neonatal intensive care, so newborns, and a sexual health
So think about how am I going-- you only produce oxytocin in an environment where you feel safe, uninterrupted, undisturbed. Well, because one thing that you-- that we absolutely aren't is that doctors and obstetricians are unnecessary.
And they're telling these amazing stories. So like I learned that Dolly Parton, that her father paid the obstetrician in cornmeal when she was born. Can you dig that?
You don't want any patient with cholera to be able to enter the hospital. It's highly infectious. And we had pediatrics and obstetrics . We needed to keep all these vulnerable patients separate from the cholera patients.
And most people think of the Victorians as being uptight. That was what he spent most of his career doing, drugs for obstetrics .
And most people think of the Victorians as being uptight. He made something called methergine, which is still one of the most widely used drugs in obstetrics to prevent the death of women from post-partum hemorrhaging.
So this is the regular pattern. Now, imagine if you're living in rural North Dakota, and the nearest obstetrician that you have is maybe 100 miles away in Fargo, right? In fact, 35% of US counties today are what are called maternity deserts, where they don't have access to maternity care.
But what ended up happening was they started stripping even basic services from Riverton's Hospital in particular. So the doctor I profile, whose name is Roger Goes, got really upset because they eliminated the entire obstetrics wing department from Riverton's Hospital. So now all of a sudden, you could not deliver a baby in your home community.
Because that's what we've lost. As we've come through history, we see women being put on the bed on their backs to make it more easier for the obstetrician, or the doctor, to see or to use the forceps.
Absolutely, and natural birth becomes more possible if we do less. And that's the hard thing, I think, for modern obstetrics to get its head around. Modern obstetrics comes at birth from a problem solving, slightly masculine, patriarchal angle, if I might say.
Any parent who stood at the birth of their child should have heard the Apgar technique being used. She really pioneered not only women in medicine in the United States, but also the field of anesthetic obstetrics . And one of the many features about her-- and again, shared by several of the women-- is the painstaking and continuous attention to detail
So, I, myself, thought, "Oh, I can't. I can't. OK, that with Dr. Amos Grunebaum, good friend of mine, Chief at Cornell Medical Center, gynecologist and obstetrician." What he put on Page 61, when I read that because he did some of the stories from his office.
In Guatemala, we ended up -- through Planned Parenthood, we found an obstetrician who was just so remarkable that we actually picked the country because of her. I wanted to look
But then the health care worker piece is also really important. We will never have enough doctors to fulfill the burden of most global health issues. And as you heard our obstetrician