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She defines herself as the "rebellious gynecologist". From a Syrian father and a Spanish mother, medicine has always been very present in Miriam Al Adib's house. She was the first of three sisters to pronounce that: "Dad, when I grow up I want to be like you," when the head of the family took them to the girls' consultation. Today, Yasmin is a doctor in aesthetic medicine, Amira dentist and Miriam specialist in obstetrician and professor of master in Sexuality. Mother of four daughters, teacher and star disseminator in social networks, she has won for three consecutive years the award for the best gynecologist in Spain, granted by the online medicine platform Doctoralia.

In addition to helping women to have good hormonal health at all stages of their lives, since she was a baby she also liked to write and disseminate. That has made her a prolific author, with four titles published. After the success of Let's talk about vaginas, the last one is Let's talk about adolescence: And about sex, and about love, and about respect, and much more (Singular books). A book that, in the opinion of the gynecologist, adults should read.

FROM REPRODUCTION TO PLEASURE

Because, for Al Adib, the intergenerational clash has existed all his life. "Oh my mother with teenagers! It's the typical phrase my grandmother used to say. In his time, sexuality was synonymous with reproduction and today, instead, it is synonymous with pleasure. But, both then and now, the woman has always been the passive subject and the man the active subject that gives pleasure, "he defends.

With this scheme you can easily understand the approach of the gynecologist: "The woman has gone from reproductive object to hypersexualized object". He explains it in different life stages. "She was to be chaste, remain a virgin until marriage, and then bear children to the male. In menopause, when she could no longer reproduce, she would turn off, seclude herself and wear black." That's why, she describes, the girls played with kitchenettes and dolls, preparing for life.

Today, however, a girl "plays twerking on TikTok, with one foot in adulthood." And she continues to struggle to show herself valid to society at 50: "She gets divorced and stays sexually attractive." The adults of today are not the adults of the past, he says. "So we can't pretend, therefore, that teenagers are."

SEX EDUCATION (REALLY)

According to Al Adib, sex education starts from birth. "There has been a current in which babies were left to cry to learn or it was said that they get used to the arms. But it has been shown that the iron fist does not build a strong adult."

In fact, when babies develop a secure attachment with mothers, feeling that their physical and emotional needs are met, the gynecologist says: "They will have healthier relationships and better cope with the grief of the breakup." Instead, he continues, "children who have developed anxious attachment will be controlling and jealous." Those who develop another type of attachment, the avoidant, "will be more likely to feel uncomfortable in intimacy, they will avoid commitment and connection with a person to avoid the subsequent drama if it ends."

PORN CULTURE

Adolescence is another key stage, according to Dr., as they begin to build bonds outside the family that also influence them. "Kids who get quality sex education delay the onset of sex." For Al Adib, the mistake is to think that it is about teaching how to have sex or talking from the risk of getting pregnant and having a sexually transmitted disease. "We do not satisfy the curiosity of these kids and they go to the internet to look for it. There they find the culture of porn, the objectification of women and stereotypes." This accentuates patterns: "Sex is trivialized and detached from the affective and emotional part."

It proposes a solution with three R's: respect, reciprocity and responsibility. "A very high percentage of young people have sex without desire." He also doesn't understand the obsession with labeling." I'm 'I don't know what sexual' and that seems cool. We should not lose focus: protecting people's sexual and reproductive rights. Do not harm or be harmed regardless of one's orientation, which is very respectable."

We are not made to spend our whole lives with a person by nature, but we are not only nature, we are also culture, he explains. "The brain loves novelty. Everyone knows that the unreal stage of falling in love is fantastic, but that cannot lead us to be drug addicts of falling in love because we are biopsychosocial beings and love is a feeling that is built. " But it takes effort.

DATING APPS

When you have too many options in front of you, as happens in apps like Tinder or Bumble, it doesn't improve well-being, he says. "Like food, sex is neither good nor bad, but depends on how it is used. If I eat junk food, that will satisfy me immediately but it will not be good for my health. And it's the same with sex."

Talk about affective responsibility. What does it mean? "It does not mean deceiving a person who is in love or having to reciprocate forced. It means not taking advantage of it for an ephemeral pleasure and leaving it planted." However, the culture of immediacy brought to relationships causes the so-called ghosting, when it disappears without leaving a trace or responding to calls and messages. "It's complicated to base relationships on screens. In that format it is not easy to be real because you lack non-verbal language. If before, until you got married, it was said that you did not really know your partner, in coexistence, now you do not even know him in person. How are you going to get to know her? Social networks, in addition, magnify jealous and possession behaviors, "reflects the gynecologist.

Precisely on TikTok, where she has almost 200,000 fans, talking about certain topics generates very polarized opinions, for and against. But the reality is more complex. "If I decide to talk about the birth control pill, for example, there are comments behind each stance: either good or bad. You have to respect the woman who wants to take it and the one who doesn't. It should really depend on the person's clinical context and wishes. However, there is usually a tendency to zasca. It only puts people in sacks. There is no reasoning debate or serious conversations where there is mutual learning." Hence his eagerness to break taboos regarding the rule.

ENDOMETRIOSIS

"Almost 50% of women take an average of eight years to be diagnosed with this disease since the pain begins. It's terrible." Al Adib explains that we are cyclical and, at certain times of the cycle, it is normal not to feel linear, because the energy varies, but that should not confuse us and lead us to normalize the pathological. "The ads for pads sell you that with the rule we have to be dressed super tight in the disco, jumping in the pool ... And so we ended up thinking that we have to make the pine," he jokes.

If you know your body, you'll know when to ask for help. "You have to accept the cycles and stop blaming hormones for an argument or a headache. Women are anything but linear. Progesterone exerts an effect on the cycle and, when it is lacking, we are more irritable. That's not a sign of weakness and it shouldn't lead to charcarrillo." It means that, socially, if you are under 40 you blame the period and, if you are over 40, menopause. "You do not have to feel sick if one day you do not feel like doing sports, some of us are influenced more and others less, we are each a world."

In consultation, sometimes there are cases in which the contraceptive method can fail, but the statistics of people who interact without a condom are very relevant, he says. "The girls usually have it clearer but, when it comes to materializing it in a context in which they have drunk or the boy tells them that he cuts their roll, they do not have the tools to stop it."

Many find it difficult and keep going on with that red line. But it doesn't just happen to teenagers, says the gynecologist. "A lot of grown women tear their garments and say, 'How could I do this knowing what I know!' The consequences are not measured, so even less so when the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the most judicious part, is not fully developed. All the more reason for quality sex education then."

  • Motherhood
  • Infertility
  • Sex
  • HBPR

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