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Tampons

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Updated and Verified: October 05, 2024 (News page records significant changes.)

Every day, tampons injure and kill women and girls. Not always, not even typically - but routinely. So, tampon use is a matter of informed consent: she should know the potential of injury and death from tampons.

Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) and Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome (mTSS) routinely injure and kill women and girls - and tampons often cause that Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome. This fact is common knowledge among specialized epidemiologists, endocrinologists, and similar medical professionals.1 Toxic Shock Syndrome expert Dr. Patrick M. Schlievert, publishing in The Lancet in 2020, warns that "Menstrual [toxic shock syndrome] remains a dangerous threat."2 One way to learn more about this is by visiting a library or the internet and looking up the term Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Research consistently shows that tampons routinely cause Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome - and that Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome routinely causes organ failure and death.3 However, nowadays, too few people know that, every day, tampons injure and kill women and girls.

How to Deal with the Risks and Harms of Tampons

The potential injuriousness and deadliness of tampons need not necessarily translate into a frenzied call to avoid tampons or create a demand that they be banned. After all, cars also injure and kill women and girls every day. So do husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. And still there is no reason to ban or avoid these things generally. But, there is a difference. Take the example of cars: people generally know that there is a non-zero chance that a car ride could kill. News of death from a car crash strikes no one as a completely unanticipated surprise: everyone knows it could happen. However, few people ever learn that tampons routinely hurt and even kill women and girls. That is the difference: informed consent.

For now, Dr. Schlievert warns that "young women [are] more likely to develop [Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome] if they [are] unfamiliar with warning information" about the risks of Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome and how tampons can cause it.2 Dr. Schlievert also warns that complacency is worsening the harms of Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome:

[Alarmingly,] [t]here has not been pervasive news media coverage of [Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome] since the [amount of Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome] was reduced 10-fold in 1984. This has led to complacency.2

The researcher explains a key scientific finding about the metabolic risks and harms from tampons - and how that science may be potentially controversial by risking harm to the industrial myth that tampons are always safe and effective:

The most potentially controversial aspect of the study by Billon et al.[1] is their finding that use of tampons for [greater than] 6 [hours] . . . increases risk of [Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome]. A prior study showed an increased risk of [Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome] in association with overnight use of tampons. However, that prior study was performed in the early 1980s when tampons of the highest absorbency were marketed. Since 1984, there has been little evidence to suggest that tampon use of [greater than] 6 [hours] or even overnight (approximately 8 [hours]) poses an increased risk on [Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome]. This has led to the current recommended use of a tampon for 2 [to] 8 [hours]. The Billon et al. finding is important if confirmed by additional recent epidemiology data. It is important to consider[] that 8-[hour] tampon use overnight versus 8-[hours] use during the daytime may also have different risks due to different body positions and menses accumulation. If the current data are confirmed, the recommended duration of use of individual tampons should be reduced. No matter what, however, women should remain vigilant to the early [Menstrual Toxic Shock Syndrome] symptoms, and they should use enhanced caution with tampon use of [greater than] 6 [hours].2

References

References

  1. Vostral S. Toxic shock syndrome, tampons and laboratory standard–setting. CMAJ. 2017;189(20):E726-E728. http://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.161479
  2. Schlievert PM. Menstrual TSS remains a dangerous threat. eClinicalMedicine. 2020;21. http://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100316
  3. Billon A, Gustin MP, Tristan A, et al. Association of characteristics of tampon use with menstrual toxic shock syndrome in France. eClinicalMedicine. 2020;21. http://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100308

Medical, Legal, and Metabolic Advice

Here in the USA, it is generally illegal and a bad idea for anyone but a jurisdiction-licensed physician to give medical advice, anyone but a jurisdiction-licensed attorney to give legal advice, anyone but a jurisdiction-licensed nutritionist or registered dietician to give metabolic advice, and so forth. This website's information is generally incomplete to predict how applying it may affect a given visitor - because the effects depend on the person's unique circumstances and characteristics.

So, here is the only medical, legal, and metabolic advice on this website: None of this website is individualized medical, legal, or metabolic advice. It is general information. You should not try to apply any of this information to your life, unless you know what you are doing. Generally, the governments of USA's jurisdictions (states and territories) declare two things through law:

  1. Without the guidance of a jurisdiction-licensed physician, attorney, or nutritionist: you do not know what you are doing, so it is unwise and unsafe for you to make too many decision about your medical, legal, and metabolic status and circumstances, and
  2. no one but a licensed physician, attorney, or nutritionist can safely and effectively advise you about those statuses and circumstances - thus, it is generally illegal for anyone else to try.

Obviously, those standards are extremely conservative, if not heavy-handed. However, one should remember that many of those people in government who uphold such strict standards have seen the stuff of nightmares: predictable, preventable, terrible consequences when the least capable and least conscientious people make the worst decisions - whether medically, legally, nutritionally, or otherwise. So, it is not wildly unreasonable to promote - even to legally command - erring on the safe side. Still, various jurisdictions do provide some exceptions to those exceptionally strict standards under law.

Here in Minnesota (and in many other U.S. states and territories) a person can help you with certain aspects of your medical, legal, and metabolic status and circumstances - even when that person is not formally licensed by the jurisdiction. Minnesota, for example, allows various people besides licensed nutritionists and registered dieticians to give metabolic advice and guidance: certain Complementary and Alternative Health Care providers, which Minnesota allows under law. Minn. Stat. § 146A. Thus, one need not feel completely locked into the strict standards listed above (though jurisdictions do typically still hold alternative providers to certain basic standards under law). Instead, in the USA, one can discuss the information on this website, and receive guidance about it, from various experts - whether jurisdiction-licensed or not. Meanwhile, this thorough and smart-sounding notice and explanation should not tempt any visitor into having any extra trust for the information in this website. At most, as the saying goes: "trust but verify."

Sincerely,

Dr. R. Floyd Lindquist

Her Metabolism: Founder, Treasurer, Secretary, Lead Data Scientist, and Director of Communications and Research

PhD (Thanatology), PsyD (Psychology), DLP (Law and Policy), MPH (Nutrition & Epidemiology), MS (Nutrition), MA (Counseling)

floyd[at]hermetabolism[dot]org

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