Beyond the Scroll: Making Sense of Women’s Health Information

When I was training, journal club wasn’t optional; it was where we learned to be skeptical. We would sit around a table and critically analyze a study. Was the sample size big enough? Who funded it? Did the conclusion actually match the data, or did the abstract oversell it? That skepticism became second nature. It’s still how I read every new paper before I bring the knowledge into my practice. 

But as a gynecologist at Well by Messer, I know my patients aren’t sitting in journal clubs. They’re scrolling Instagram between school drop-off and work and showing up to 

appointments with already formed opinions about everything. “Seed oils cause infertility.” “Post-menopausal women should be taking testosterone.” “Everyone is freezing their eggs now by thirty.” I don’t blame them. The information is everywhere, and most of us were not taught how to sort the solid evidence from the enticing captions. 

That’s the real shift I’ve watched happen in medicine: a five-minute TikTok gets more airtime in someone’s mind than a study that took ten years and thousands of participants to produce. And I get it - the memes and clips are shorter, more emotional, and easier to remember. But easier to remember doesn’t mean more true. 

So a big part of my job now isn’t just managing gynecological care, it is being an interpreter. When a patient brings me something she read or heard, I don’t dismiss it. I ask her to walk me through it with her: Where did this come from? Was it a real study or a personal story? Who benefits if you believe it? Is what’s true for your friend or the patient in the video, really relevant to the person in front of me? 

This is part of why I am so happy to be practicing medicine in a place where patients feel comfortable asking those questions, where we have enough time to have a real conversation, and where teaching is an integral part of the visit. 

The goal is not to make people distrust all information. It is to help them trust the right 

information, and to know that their doctors are a resource for figuring out the difference.