Common Corpus No. 10
For all women, for life
Welcome back to Common Corpus, our weekly curation of the best evidence-based women’s health content designed to help you navigate, optimize, and advocate for your well-being at every stage of life.
This week, we explore if there is any truth to the cliché that women pee more often than men, an exciting new genomic test that holds the potential to spare some breast cancer patients from chemotherapy treatment, the link betweent the genetic risk for depression and heart disease, and the question of whether the gender of your physician matters, along with much more.
We hope you find this week’s resources insightful, useful, and empowering as you navigate your own health journey. If you’re enjoying Common Corpus and finding it useful, please share it with anyone else who might be interested.
And if you want to learn more about what Common Corpus is, and why we do what we do, please visit our About page.
News & Noteworthy
What’s making the news in women’s health
Do women need to pee more often than men?
While often dismissed as a simple biological quirk, female urinary frequency is a surprisingly complex issue shaped by physiology and anatomy but also social conditioning.
Women and men’s bladder sizes are remarkably similar, both holding around 400–600 millilitres of urine.
The pelvic floor acts as a crucial muscular sling, essential for maintaining normal bladder capacity and control. Physical events such as pregnancy, vaginal childbirth, and the natural estrogen decline during menopause can stretch, strain, or weaken these supporting muscles, which can increase daily urinary urgency.
Women’s pelvic compartment is also more crowded, meaning they may feel the sensation of fullness at lower volumes of urine.
Women naturally face a higher susceptibility to overactive bladder and urinary tract infections due to their distinct urological anatomy, further compounding the frequency of bathroom trips.
But women are also conditioned to hold their urine more than men, often due to social conditions, whether the availability of public toilets or hygiene conditions.
The takeaway: There are clear anatomical, physiological/hormonal, and social reasons behind the cliché of women needing to pee more often, some of which may be addressed through specialized pelvic floor physical therapy.
New genomic test allows breast cancer patients to safely bypass chemotherapy
Results from a major international trial reveal that a groundbreaking genomic test can accurately identify which breast cancer patients can safely skip chemotherapy without increasing their risk of recurrence.
The study followed over 4,000 newly diagnosed patients with hormone-sensitive breast cancer to evaluate the effectiveness of the Prosigna genomic test.
The test analyzes the activity of 50 genes within tumour tissue to generate a risk score that predicts the likelihood of the cancer returning over the next decade.
Five years post-treatment, 94% of patients with a low test score who skipped chemotherapy were alive and cancer-free on hormone therapy alone, compared to 95% of those who endured both chemotherapy and hormone therapy.
The takeaway: This breakthrough represents a significant leap forward for personalized medicine. By using tumour biology rather than traditional clinical features to guide treatment, this tool holds the promise of both sparing patients the physical and emotional toll of unnecessary chemotherapy and saving healthcare system resources that could be allocated more efficiently.
The Latest Research
The latest in academic research in women’s health
The hidden link between the genetic risk of depression and heart disease in women
A recent study reveals that women with a high genetic predisposition for major depression are significantly more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases (such as coronary artery disease and heart failure) compared to men with the same genetic risk. Strikingly, this elevated cardiovascular risk is present even in women who have never been formally diagnosed with depression or prescribed psychiatric medications, suggesting there is a biological link, not simply a behavioural one. While more research is needed to untangle whether depression risk can help better predict cardiovascular risk, the research highlights how cardiovascular risk calculators need to better reflect sex differences.
Listen & Learn
The latest in women’s health audio content worth your time
Does the gender of your physician matter?
Urologic oncologist Dr. Christopher Wallis dives into fascinating population-level data, showing how patients operated on by female surgeons experience significantly lower rates of death, hospital readmission, and major medical complications. Dr. Wallis breaks down the specific behavioural differences driving these superior outcomes, noting that female physicians consistently spend more time with patients, adhere more strictly to clinical guidelines, and utilize a more patient-centered communication style. He also discusses a stark, measurable double standard in the medical field: data shows that when a male surgeon has a bad patient outcome, his referral network remains intact, but female surgeons face a drastic, punitive drop in referrals following a similar complication. This conversation is a powerful, data-driven wake-up call to recognize and dismantle systemic biases embedded in our healthcare systems.
The Global Perspective
Women’s health around the world
Why merging UNFPA and UN Women might be a problem
In response to United Nations funding challenges, a recent proposal suggests merging UN Women and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) into a single entity to streamline operations. However, this Devex opinion piece argues that this merger would severely undermine global gender equality by diluting the distinct, irreplaceable mandates of both agencies. Because UN Women focuses on broad gender norms and policies while UNFPA specializes in sexual and reproductive health, combining them risks weakening critical funding streams and specialized frontline capabilities. Ultimately, consolidating these efforts could make the new agency an easier target for political attacks, leaving vulnerable women and girls at greater risk amid an unprecedented global backlash against women’s rights.
Common Interest
Quick hits that we found interesting, thought-provoking, or useful this week
There has been a lot of good news in cancer research lately...
An experimental vaccine shows promise in reducing the recurrence and spread of melanoma. LINK
Researchers have identified proteins that appear to accurately predict lung cancer risk more than five years before diagnosis, and have early evidence of an existing anti-inflammatory drug that seems to reduce lung cancer risk in people with these proteins. LINK
And another experimental medication has nearly doubled survival rates for pancreatic cancer. LINK
Melinda French Gates just invested an additional $215 million in women’s health. Listen to her conversation with OBGYN Dr. Jen Gunter about why. LINK
Andrex’s new campaign “push like you’re pooing” aims to dismantle the stigma around pooing during childbirth and opens up a conversation about one of the most common but least discussed anxieties about childbirth. LINK
FIFA has announced a new worldwide education program focused on the science behind optimizing female athletic performance, including everything from sleep, to hormones, to pregnancy and menopause. LINK