‘There’s this idea that it’s OK for women to suffer’ – Dr Amir Khan on medical misogyny

“Women’s health is an everyone issue,” says television presenter and health advocate Cherry Healey.

“A lot of people don’t feel listened to when they go to the doctors,” the 44-year-old says. “They often end up googling or checking on TikTok to try find information and self-diagnosing.”

But, “the internet is wild and you can really scare yourself”.

A 2022 YouGov survey found that 80% of women say they don’t feel heard by their doctors. To address this, Healey has launched a podcast, No Appointment Necessary, alongside full-time GP and author Dr Amir Khan, a resident doctor for ITV’s Lorraine and Good Morning Britain.

It aims to offer trusted, no-nonsense health advice to help women feel heard and understood.

“One of the purposes of this podcast is to get everything you need to know about subjects like UTIs, alcohol, libido, weight-loss jabs and everything else in half an hour, so you can equip yourself to go to the GP if you do manage to get an appointment.

“We want the podcast to be really entertaining and fun,” Healey adds. “But the root of it is that it has to be an incredibly useful health resource for women and men, because women’s health is not just a women’s issue.

“We’re often the glue that holds the society and community together so when we’re not OK, everyone is not OK because of the ripple effect.”

Khan adds that the podcast is important because not only do him and Healey show their vulnerable sides as a doctor and a television presenter but they’re also ‘normal people’. “I am a working GP in Bradford and we talk about things that affect everyone all the time, including ourselves,” he says.

There’s a ‘Chat GP’ segment where Khan answers listener questions and Healey pushes Khan to tackle the toughest questions – including medical misogyny, which he says is “very real”.

“I’m saying this as a man but there is this idea for women that it’s OK for them to suffer, or it’s OK for them to have heavy periods or terrible menopause because it’s ‘natural’,” says the 44-year-old.

He stresses this should never be the case for women.  “The tide is turning a little bit with these conversations but these are the kind of topics that we discuss on the podcast,” he adds.

Khan adds that he’s often had women in his consultation room in tears, because they’re angry and frustrated with the system.

Healey says she has been in that exact position herself, as someone who suffers from UTIs. “I had my first UTI when I was three years old,” she says. “I know what it feels like to have one, however the song, dance and hilarity of trying to get antibiotics is wild.

“If you know you know but when you’ve got a UTI, it’s a very very strong feeling and because I have had them for some time, I really know my way around it,” she says.

“Once I couldn’t get antibiotics because I wasn’t believed,” Healey explains as she recalls a time when she was maid of honour at a wedding.  “I told the doctor I had had UTIs all my life and could they please send antibiotics to a local pharmacy, but they refused and said they just didn’t believe I had one until they seen the urine sample.”

Without access to antibiotics, Healey had no choice but to go through with the wedding. “The next evening my husband looked at me and said ‘you look unbelievably unwell and you’ve gone grey’ and I felt like I was dying. We went to A&E and I was in hospital for five days on a drip. That’s after 24 hours of not being able to get antibiotics,” she says.

“Antibiotics don’t taste like crisps,” Healey says. “I don’t want them unless I have to but there is this idea that women can’t be trusted with them.

“There are currently five erectile dysfunction cures available for men but not one single over-the-counter UTI cure,” she adds. “There’s no cure for endometriosis which is debilitating. There’s a lack of research and a lack of resources for women.”

Although there is a strong emphasis on physical health, both Khan and Healey say they now also prioritise their mental wellbeing, having being shaped by their own life experiences.

“I found that perimenopause hit me mentally before it hit me physically,” Healey says. “I would say that I suffer from a normal amount of anxiety for a people pleaser who’s worried about what people think of me.

“When I hit 40, I was feeling anxious for three hours, then I would have that anxiety for half of the day and then I’d be anxious for a whole day. I remember sitting in a car park and calling my friend Kate and crying on the phone saying ‘there’s something wrong’.

“I was also waking up at four in the morning with these heart palpitations and thinking I was going mad. It affected my work and I wasn’t sleeping or eating properly.

“I wasn’t myself so I had a really interesting chat with a gynaecologist who said ‘you’re not going crazy, don’t worry, this is the perimenopause and these are things you can do in your life before you try HRT to try and diminish it.’

“It helped absolutely massively. The thing that helped the most though was knowledge because now when I wake up at 4am, I know it’s my hormones fluctuating and that I’m OK. I take some deep breaths, I ride it out and I go straight back to sleep because I no longer think I’m having a heart attack.”

Khan admits that he used to think he had quite robust mental health and didn’t really suffer from anxiety. “That was until I started on TV and on social media,” he says.

“I obviously wasn’t prepared already for other people’s opinions on every aspect of what I said or did or looked like. When it all suddenly started without any preparation, it did cause huge anxiety for me and I found it a really challenging thing to adjust to.”

No Appointment Necessary is available from October 7 on all major podcast platforms and YouTube, with new episodes every Tuesday.