Women are, of course, very ill almost all of the time. At the very least, they are very ill once a month when, as we doctors put it, they “menstruate”. It’s a nasty, messy business which also stops women from skiing.
This never used to happen in olden times because skiing wasn’t really a holiday option. Women also used to have loads of babies and were busy breastfeeding most of their lives, so there was no time for regular menstruation.
So what can the modern woman do? She doesn’t want to have lots of babies, but she does want to go skiing. The answer, as postulated by Sarah Thomas and Charlotte Ellertson from the Population Council in Mexico, is the birthcontrol pill.
Just take it regularly, and you can book those skiing tickets. Of course, the pill does come with problems, but who wants to live forever? If you go skiing, you probably won’t anyway (Lancet 2000; 355: 922-4).