Dr. Ann Peters Shares Insights on Common Women's Health Myths

Ann Peters, M.D., MS, is an experienced gynecologist and surgeon in The Gynecology Center at Mercy. In a recent response to questions from Women’s Health magazine regarding “common health myths women should know about,” Dr. Peters offered her insights…

Here are several health myths that I often hear about:
1. Painful periods - women often believe that having painful periods is normal and part of "being a woman". Unfortunately, more often than not women actually have conditions such as endometriosis, fibroids, or adenomyosis that cause them to have painful and often heavy periods. There is nothing normal or natural about these often debilitating gyn conditions that are often just treated by birth control pills and often do not address patients' true diagnosis. While some women have painful periods, we should not be accepting these as the norm.

2. Douching and vaginal cleaning products - a lot of women still believe that the vagina is unclean and that they should be using special feminine products that help "freshen up" the vagina such as Vagisil, Summer's Eve, or douching products. More often than not these products actually cause an imbalance of the normal, healthy bacteria in the vagina and cause women to have bacterial vaginosis (BV) or yeast infections or worsening their symptoms and cause potential irritation.

3. Probiotics for yeast infections - there currently is very limited data for probiotics to be helpful for vaginal yeast infections. Yet, women continue to buy these often very expensive products that often make very little difference.

-- Ann Peters, M.D., MS, Institute for Gynecologic Care, Mercy Medical Center
Specially trained in the care of routine and complex gynecologic diagnoses, Dr. Ann Peters comes to Mercy with first-hand experience from Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She focuses on the evaluation and treatment of a wide range of GYN conditions including: endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, uterine bleeding and fibroids.