The Lowdown’s March 2025 Newsletter

Hi everyone, Alice from The Lowdown here 👋

First off, a huge thank you to everyone who’s already shared their experiences in our infant feeding survey. Thanks to you, our partner Feed UK has already met with the Department of Health and shared some of the early headline findings – and they are really listening to how we can better support parents with feeding information during pregnancy.

We’ve decided to keep the survey open until Monday 31st because we’d love to hit 1,000 responses (at 750 so far!) So if you’ve had a baby on the NHS and fed your child, we want to hear from you. Whether you breastfed, bottle fed, combo fed, had a brilliant or difficult experience – it all matters. The survey takes just 5 minutes to complete, and here’s the link. If you missed last month’s newsletter, here’s a video explaining what we’re doing and why. 

We’ll be sharing the full report in next month’s newsletter, along with a simple way for you to write to your MP to use this opportunity to make things better for women and their families. 

Now, onto what we’ve learned about women’s health this month…

Big news for BV sufferers: It’s not your vagina’s fault 😤🔬

In the world of vaginal infections, bacterial vaginosis (BV) is like the stealthy sister to thrush; both can cause unusual vaginal discharge, but it’s more likely to be BV if the discharge has a strong, fishy smell and you don’t have soreness or itching. BV is sly, because half of women don’t have any BV symptoms at all. If left untreated it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, problems with fertility, premature births and newborn deaths.

If you suffer from recurrent BV (or are just realising you may have it…) you’ll be pleased to know that researchers have just figured out that it’s not all down to your vagina – and (what a surprise) male sexual partners and penises may be partially to blame. In a trial of 164 couples with BV, researchers managed to achieve higher cure rates by treating BV in both sexual partners – rather than just the woman – with oral and topical antibiotics.

It does blow my mind that we’ve just proven this link, for an infection that some estimate impacts 1.3 BILLION women worldwide. Scientists have long suspected the connection with sexual partners, but all it took was 164 couples in Melbourne taking some antibiotics to work it out? Come on science, you’re better than that…

We’ve asked some BV experts for their take, and why you should head to a sexual health clinic or specialist if your BV keeps coming back 👇

New research shows link between high BMI and coils falling out 👀

An update was released from the FSRH last week (the bods who write the rulebook for doctors when it comes to contraception in the UK) and it covers one of our most talked about topics at The Lowdown – the coil. 

A massive study on almost 230,000 people using coils looked at the number of expulsions (the coil partially or fully coming out) and noticed a new trend or association. The risk of an expulsion of your coil increases if your BMI is over 25 and gets higher as BMI rises. The risk of an expulsion of a coil is 1 in 20, but may be double this if your BMI is over 40. 

We’re passionate that every person gets to choose the right contraceptive for them, whatever the size of your body and we have a great article about contraception for bigger bodies below 👇

In the news… 📰🌎

❤️ It’s brilliant news that women and partners who suffer pregnancy loss before 24 weeks are to be entitled to two weeks bereavement leave in England, Wales and Scotland. The far reaching physical and emotional impacts of baby loss are starting to finally be recognised. 

🧪 I’m going to stop moaning about science for a sec, and celebrate the fact that some clever scientists have invented a simple swab test for womb cancer that means you don’t need an ultrasound or invasive hysteroscopy. The test has just been approved by regulators and will be made available to women who are over the age of 45 and have abnormal uterine bleeding in the UK soon. What a huge step forward. 

🤔 I was fascinated by some of the news reports this month about the dangers of TNT (testosterone replacement therapy) which is when men take artificial testosterone to boost low testosterone levels. I didn’t realise that TNT can impact male fertility as it can shut down men’s natural testosterone system, and sometimes this isn’t reversible. If your partner is dabbling in TNT, it might be worth chatting to him about the fact he’s potentially using contraception? 

Review of the month: 

Cerelle = main job is done ✅

Post of the month 🩺💉

Our very own Dr Fran introduces a new IUD available in the US! 🇺🇲 Is Miudella a groundbreaking innovation or just reinventing the wheel? 🤔

That’s all for this month, as always I love hearing your feedback on anything we write about, so please just hit reply to this email – I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks,

Alice

Our new book Contraception: Your essential guide to separating the myths from the medicine is available to pre-order now here