Customer Reviews

The Blessings of the Curse: No More Periods?

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As a medical professional with Masters Degrees in Public Health and Education from Harvard University, where I too have spent countless hours researching the stacks of Harvard's Countway Library, I am impressed with the thoroughness of Dr. Rako's responsible research. Finally a medical professional, unbiased by pharmaceutical conflicts of interest and unafraid to speak truths many would rather not to have to face, has done the work of laying out, in language we can all understand, that wholesale manipulation of women's normal menstrual cycle has costs to our bodies that the drug companies do not want us to know about -- and that too few of our own doctors know. How many of us know that "the shot" can cause osteoporosis even in young women -- and that the birth control pill is now known to contribute actively to cancer of the cervix? 6,000 American women -- many of them young women with young children -- will die this year of this cancer. In addition to the important well-documented health hazards of the pill, Rako draws attention to the fact that manipulating the menstrual cycle dislocates women from our fundamental nature. Finally, as a medical professional who was trained in graduate school to critique others' medical research, I can attest that this book is a balanced analysis of the pros and cons of doing away with women's periods. Dr. Rako has laid out the factors that will help each woman to make her own risk/benefit analysis, and will help those women for whom non-stop use of the birth control pill makes sense to choose this option. Thank you, Dr. Rako, for being a voice of sanity in a world focused on "convenience" at a cost we may know only when it is too late.

I can't say enough in praise of the much-needed critique of society's harmful
attitude toward reproductive options for women. The solid medical
research book only serves to confirm what I have instinctively
believed since I was a teenager-- that fertility and the
accompanying cycle was an empowering gift with which we should not lightly tamper.

Susan Rako has provided an invaluable resource to every woman seeking a knowledge-based approach to her reproductive choices. Whether you are a die-hard birth control believer or a natural babe, the clearly presented, easily understood information provided in The Blessing Of The Curse will increase your ability to make more educated reproductive decisions. It should be required reading at every gynecologist's office!

This book makes me angry, because so far as I know, it's the only major source of information about the possible risks of menstrual suppression. All the other books and websites and stuff I've seen about it say that there is no risk and no problems, which I find highly dubious.

So this book discusses in depth the possible risks of the hormonal meddling that menstrual suppression requires. It also questions the medical background of some of the doctors who have advocated it, documenting the dubious activities they've engaged in. This is valuable information.

The problem is that the author makes herself untrustworthy by talking about how much she loooooves menstruating. She insists that she always felt sexy and powerful and happy while she was menstruating. All the women I know - ALL the women I know - feel miserable, ugly, tired, and in pain when they're having their periods.

She also claims that before she became a doctor, she only knew one woman in her entire life who had cramps, and she characterizes this as a "rare" condition. If by "rare", she means "experienced by 95% of the women who menstruate", then I guess it is rare. Now, I know women whose periods aren't as bad as mine, but I do not know ANY woman who does not hate it or who does not have all kinds of unpleasant side effects.

Because of the ridiculous lies she tells about how wonderful menstruation is - and I'm menstruating right now, let me tell you there is nothing frelling wonderful about it - I have to wonder how much I can trust the rest of the information in her book.

One of my dear friends is religious an I was babysitting her children so she could go see a movie. I'm always interested in what other people were reading and I laughed when I saw the title in her bookshelf. Yet I could not put the book down - much like craning one's neck to see a fatality accident. This "doctor" believes women should embrace, love and adore their bloating, cramping, stained clothing, mood swings, nausea, breakouts, headaches and overall irritibleness otherwise - we just wouldn't be real women. Does that strike anyone else as utter and complete nuttery??? It's like telling a holocaust victim that thier experiences built character. What a crackpot! The book had a very evangelical agenda if you ask me. The book left me completely disgusted and unconvinced so I'll continue to get depo-provera shot every 3 months and enjoy my menstrual and pain free life.