My experience is not alone, and it is from cultures like this, where the voice and needs of the patient are not listened to, where the ‘doctor knows best’ mentality thrives, that allow people like Dr Perwaiz to flourish.

Self-care is the practice of intentionally doing things that benefit your physical, mental, or spiritual health, and it’s often lauded as the cornerstone of wellbeing and resilience. Little wonder then, that it has become highly commodified and increasingly aspirational: sold as an open-ended quest, the secret to self-care often seems to be just one click and one purchase away. It’s time to get SMART about self-care.

Aah, sex. If you read that as a sigh or a scream - same. Sex is everywhere, thrust (don’t) into our faces at every given opportunity during music, film, stage performance, and in almost every advertising and marketing campaign you’ve seen. That isn’t always a bad thing, sex is a very honest part of human life and there isn’t shame in it at all. Where there should be shame however is promoting the idea that you need to be having a certain kind of sex.

When it comes to parenting, many of us aim for “parenting perfection.” But this is unrealistic, and not the best use of parental time and energy in this all-important role. Children don’t want or need perfection and infallibility, rather, they want to be seen, heard, valued, and unconditionally loved.

Ever heard of "YAVIS"? It stands for "Young, Attractive, Verbal, Intelligent, and Successful." No, it’s not a new dating term - YAVIS is an old acronym coined in the 60’s describing the apparently “ideal” therapy client preferred by mental health professionals due to inherent biases. A good 60 years on, with the self-care industry now worth a whopping $450 billion, how prevalent is it still today?

You feel your eyes grow drier, your too-warm skin starts to prickle, your muscles ache, and your head thumps as you watch the heavy blackness of night slowly morph into the terrifying twilight which heralds the arrival of another exhausting, sleepless dawn.

Along with worsening dementia, the ‘client’s’’ loneliness is palpable.

I had known the word endometriosis since I started to see doctors, from the endless googling I used to do to simply figure out what was wrong. But not one GP had even mentioned this to me until a month ago.

‘I’m sorry you have what?’, ‘Um, how do you spell that?’, ‘I haven’t heard of that before, what is it?’ These are a few of the common phrases I often hear when I mention I have Adenomyosis. April is Adenomyosis (add-en-o-my-OH-sis) awareness month and boy is this awareness needed.

Speaking from my own experiences, I have avoided getting my smear test done for an array of different reasons but the most prevailing for me has been down to mental health and anxiety.

HPV or Human Papillomavirus is a virus, there are more than 100 different types of HPV, and some can cause cancer. Most of us will have HPV at some point or another, but the great news is that most people will never know, their immune system will fight it off, and within two years, they’ll naturally have cleared it from their system.