There's excellent news for anyone who menstruates and doesn't just like the needles involved in blood tests. In January 2024, biotechnology research company Kevin won FDA approval for its QPad Product – Menstrual pad with a removable strip for collecting blood samples for clinical tests. It offers a needle-free testing method. Menstrual blood For diabetes symptoms.
This could be the start of tapping. Great potential to make use of Menstrual blood like this. Blood testing, as we understand it today, began in 19th century. But the history of using menstrual blood in diagnosis is longer than many individuals think.
Part of this involves moving away from viewing blood as a waste product. Before Ovulation was detected In the early twentieth century, regular menstruation was considered essential to women's health. It was regarded as the one strategy to eliminate “extra” blood, which is produced by the traditional technique of eating and drinking.
Following the theories of the influential ancient doctor Galen, people believed that the liver was product of Food in the blood. Because women must have meat. More “sponges” Compared to men's flesh, it was believed to have sent any blood the body didn't must nourish it, hence menstruation.
In a medieval book (On Women's Secrets), the womb is described as “a sewer in the middle of a town where all the waste goes together and is sent out”. The theory has a 2,000-year history, which was thought to not only eliminate excess blood through the womb, but additionally to make use of the blood to flush out any harmful substances from the body.
There were other positive ways of framing it. Having access to sewers was considered higher for the body than not. So, in a belief system where it was all about waste products, that extra route out of the body could also give women a health profit. one The Hippocratic author noted. that, in some fevers: “Although many women fell ill, they were fewer than men and died less often.”
Some Western Europe Medical writers went further. They saw the womb as probably the most miraculous of all organs within the body, and praised its efficiency not only in processing waste but additionally in forming, holding and nurturing the kid.
But with this approach, the sixteenth century Medical writers got here with others. Some people don't see menstrual blood as “bad” in any way, but identical to all other blood. After all, in addition they believed that babies are comprised of their moms' blood, and breast milk is comprised of menstrual blood – so it could't be all bad. Others didn't see it as second blood, but still “useful emission”.
Conducting Western European Cultures Various prohibitions About the ability of menstruation to forestall jam setting, or to forestall bread from rising. But alongside these beliefs, medicine was already using appearance in addition to the regularity of menstrual blood as evidence for various medical conditions.
In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, people thought concerning the body when it comes to various things. The fluid in it. Not just those we recognize, like blood and phlegm, but additionally yellow bile and black bile.
Menstrual fluid was examined for evidence that one in every of these fluids was present in excess. If the menses were shiny and dark, and no clots formed, this was evidence of an excessive amount of bile. A white “fish-like” membrane means there was an excessive amount of mucus. Both of them were considered a threat to women's health.
New ways Using blood involves inserting a pad into your underwear and sending it off for evaluation. in them Ancient Greek medical textsis a test that works much the identical way.
A lady is asked to menstruate on a bit of folded cloth spread over tremendous ash. He must have a day cloth and an evening cloth. When the garments are washed, they must be dried within the sun and inspected. If the issue is phlegm, the rags will seem like they've mucus on them. If it's bile, they may appear reddish.
So, we still can't keep menstruating people from baking jam and bread, but many ideas from the past resonate in today's medical knowledge and “new” technologies.