u/Lamake91

You may recognise “In Good Company” from our sister subreddit, r/WomenOfIreland.

We’re now reluctantly introducing the same safeguard here on r/IrishWomensHealth.

We never wanted to introduce this measure here but unfortunately we have no choice. We’ve seen a significant increase in new members recently, alongside an increase in abusive, judgemental and anti-choice comments, particularly people attempting to shame women for accessing their basic right to healthcare, including abortion, and for making decisions about their own bodies and lives.

That is not something we will allow to become normalised here.

“In Good Company” is a flair for sensitive or particularly vulnerable posts. When used, commenting is restricted to established members of the subreddit who have built up subreddit specific karma and regularly contribute positively to the community.

It’s an additional safeguard to help reduce brigading, bad faith participation and harassment, particularly when moderators aren’t online.

We’ve unfortunately had women sharing deeply personal experiences only to be targeted, mocked or antagonised.

We simply don’t want that happening here.

We are a volunteer mod team and cannot be online 24/7. Filters aren’t perfect, either. We do review comments caught by the filter where possible and manually approve those that are clearly helpful and made in good faith.

If your comment is removed by the filter, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done anything wrong. If you think it has been caught incorrectly, please contact us through modmail and we’ll take a look when we can.

And please remember: we are volunteers and we are humans. You can disagree with a moderation decision without abusing the people who volunteer their time to keep this community safe. Abuse towards the mod team will not be tolerated.

If you see brigading, harassment, abuse or bad faith behaviour, please report it. It genuinely helps us.

Ultimately, we want r/IrishWomensHealth to remain a kind, respectful and safe place for women, including LGBTQ+ women, to turn to when they need it most. 💛

Gach lá, gach áit, seasaimid le chéile ar son shláinte na mban.

Every day, everywhere, we stand together for women’s health. 💛

We’ve heard your concerns about the increasing prevalence of bots in the subreddit and over the past week we’ve been taking steps to address it.

We’ve been trialling a new app called Bot Bouncer and it’s extremely effective. In fact, it’s quite scary just how convincing some of these accounts are. They’re able to communicate in a way that’s very natural, understand Irish culture and slang and generally blend in incredibly well. We’ve observed a number of you interacting with these accounts believing they were genuine users.

For the past week, we’ve been manually reviewing every flag from Bot Bouncer to make sure it’s accurately identifying accounts and that we’re happy with how it’s working.

Having now trialled it for a week, we’re confident enough in its accuracy to allow Bot Bouncer to issue bans itself going forward.

What if you’re falsely flagged?

Obviously, no automated system is perfect. If your account is incorrectly identified as a bot and banned, you’ll need to contact r/botbouncer via modmail to appeal the ban directly with them. Once they’ve reviewed your appeal, please let us know the outcome of their decision so we can follow up on our end where necessary.

We’ll continue to monitor how it performs and make adjustments if needed.

And perhaps most importantly, if you’ve spent the last week arguing with someone in the comments and thought “there is absolutely no way this person is real”… you may have been onto something! 😂

Traitors Ireland Season 2

The Traitors Ireland Season 2 starts tonight at 9.30pm on RTÉ1. This was a requested post from a while back to discuss some of the big tv shows.

We’ve seen a big increase in new members joining the subreddit recently and we’ve also had a few queries in modmail about the “In Good Company” flair, so we thought we’d once again, explain a little more about what it’s all about and why we use it.

In Good Company is a flair used for posts covering sensitive or more vulnerable topics. When a post has this flair, the thread is limited to established members of the subreddit, people who regularly engage in positively with the community and have built up their subreddit specific karma. This is an additional safety measure to help reduce brigading and protect the OP and others who may be particularly vulnerable.

We’ve unfortunately seen an increase in bad faith outsiders, including incel accounts, finding their way into sensitive threads. We’ve had situations where women sharing difficult or deeply personal experiences have been targeted, mocked or antagonised in the comments. The worst incident and ultimately what pushed us to find a better solution, was when a user shared an experience of abuse and her abuser found the post weeks later and attempted to target her through it.

We simply don’t want that happening here, it’s a safe place for all women (including all LGBTQ+) and we are determined to keep it that way.

We also want to acknowledge that we’re a volunteer mod team. We’re not always online, and we can’t be sitting watching the subreddit 24/7. That’s why these filters and safeguards are so important, they provide an additional layer of protection when we’re not around to catch something ourselves. Please remember what the mod team can see is very different to what an average user experiences.

When we are online and have the time, we do try to review comments caught by the “in good company” filter and manually approve those that are clearly helpful and being made in good faith. Our filters won’t always get things right and neither will we. If your comment has been removed by a filter, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done anything wrong, sometimes it just needs a human moderator to take a look so please message us in modmail.

When in modmail, please be respectful, we’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse lately and it won’t be tolerated. We are volunteers and we are humans doing our best to protect this subreddit.

We’ve genuinely seen the best and worst of people on this subreddit. We’ve seen women receive incredible support from complete strangers and we’ve also seen people come here with the sole intention of causing harm. As volunteers, we’re doing our best to keep the balance and make sure this remains a supportive space.

So please be patient with us, be kind to each other and if you see something that looks like brigading, harassment or bad faith behaviour, report it to us. It genuinely helps. We are one community, we need to all work together to keep this a safe place.

Ultimately, we want to keep this community a kind, respectful and most importantly, safe place for women to turn to when they need it most.

We are genuinely so grateful to all of you who have been so kind and understanding to one another and the mod team.

Gach lá, gach áit, seasaimid le chéile mar mhná (Every day, everywhere, we stand together as women)

Hi there, Has anyone else experienced this? I there seems to be a system glitch with temporary bans.

It happened over on two large subreddits that I moderate. I first bridged it on r/Ireland last week and I initially assumed it was some weird glitch, but it has now happened again on another subreddit r/AskIreland.

In both instances, a temporary ban was issued. The Mod Log correctly shows the ban as temporary, but the user summary is showing it as a permanent ban, and the user is in fact permanently banned. The user is issued with a temporary ban notice so this is not a manual moderator mistake, it’s a system glitch.

So the Mod Log says temporary, while the actual ban appears to be permanent. Has anyone else run into this recently?

I am concerned that this will cause a major issue where we will now need to review bans going back months to manually assess if the system permanently banned them when it should’ve been temporary.

Like so many women who share their stories on here every day, I’ve had my fair share of experiences with medics not taking my symptoms or illnesses seriously. I could probably write a book on the last few years alone.

However, I’ve had such a positive experience the past 24 hours that I wanted to share it.

For the past while I’ve been unwell with chest pain, tightness, breathlessness etc. I put it down to my asthma and got on with it. Things have been gradually worsening, so I went to my GP yesterday morning. She really listened to me and considered what I had to say. I’m a POTS patient but I explained that these symptoms felt very different to what I usually experience with POTS.

She immediately became concerned and phoned my cardiologist, who managed to squeeze me in yesterday afternoon.

He saw me and straight away said, “I know you know your body better than anyone due to POTS, and I believe you when you say this is different to your usual symptoms.” It probably helped that I was already extremely breathless from the short walk into the clinic to be fair. However, that one sentence meant the world to me.

He ordered scans, tests and monitoring, called ahead and asked them to fit everything in urgently. By yesterday evening, all the initial tests were done and I was leaving wearing a Holter monitor.

He’s also urgently involving my respiratory consultant and consulting two other doctors in different specialties who recently started me on new medications, to make sure there isn’t an interaction or something else contributing to what’s happening.

Hopefully I’ll have some answers soon. My cardiologist has marked everything as very urgent, so for now it’s a case of waiting for the results.

I just wanted to share a positive medical experience from the last 24 hours. It’s been an absolute whirlwind, but I’m incredibly grateful to have doctors who listened to me and believed me. I didn’t have to fight to convince them that something wasn’t right. They took what I was telling them seriously from the very beginning.

What can sometimes feel incredibly rare can also be incredibly wonderful. I just wish every patient had the same experience with every doctor.

I’ve been diagnosed with POTS for 3 years now, although there’s evidence it’s likely been there since 2017–2018. It significantly worsened after I caught COVID.

I’m a fainter and pre-fainter. It happens often and it’s infuriating. During my last faint I experienced severe respiratory difficulties and I’ve been traumatised ever since. Thankfully it happened in a hospital setting so urgent medical treatment was immediate.

I’ve been through plenty of heatwaves, including last year after another injury caused further autonomic dysfunction on top of POTs. Yet somehow, this year has been the most challenging for my POTS symptoms.

I’m overheating, shaking, my heart rate is 120–150 when I’m moving and worst of all my leg pooling is insane. By the evenings, simply standing causes my legs to pool so severely they look badly sunburnt and they’re painful. I’m following all the usual POTS advice: light clothing, rest, tripling my water intake and drinking 2–3 electrolyte drinks a day which does help with all of the above symptoms asides from the leg pooling.

The only thing that has helped the leg pooling is ice cold baths. I have an incredible inflatable bath that I use outdoors, so I sit in cold water under an umbrella for a couple of hours in the evenings and it helps massively. But I had a really busy day yesterday and couldn’t do it. My legs were pooling so badly by last night that it was painful to walk around the house. It happens every time I have to skip the cold bath.

With Irish Water warning of potential water shortages, I feel really guilty using the bath and hosepipe. It needs fresh water every day to stay cold enough to manage my symptoms. I’m also concerned they’ll issue a hosepipe ban.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Especially for severe leg pooling?

​Hi everyone!

We’re delighted to welcome Aoife Harvey, founder of Women’s Health Dublin, for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) this Friday 8th of July!

Aoife Harvey is a Clinical Specialist Pelvic Health Physiotherapist based in Dublin, Ireland, with over 20 years of clinical experience and more than a decade specialising in pelvic health.

Following her own experience with pelvic floor symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum, Aoife developed a deep passion for women’s health. She now dedicates her work to supporting women through every life stage—from pregnancy and postnatal recovery to perimenopause and menopause—providing evidence-based, practical care.

Aoife runs a busy women’s health clinic in Dublin and is widely recognised for her engaging and accessible approach to education. Through her active social media platforms, she shares expert guidance on pelvic health, helping to break down stigma and empower women to take control of their bodies.

She has featured on Ireland’s breakfast television,primetime radio and podcasts, and spoken at events to audiences of thousands, delivering evidence-based education with a signature blend of humour, honesty, and real-life insight.

The areas that Aoife and her colleagues in Women’s Health Dublin specialise in:  

• Pelvic floor dysfunction
• Bladder and bowel concerns
• Painful sex
• Pregnancy-related pelvic pain
• Postnatal recovery
• Prolapse
• Endometriosis
• Menopause
• Chronic pelvic pain
• Exercise and rehabilitation after childbirth

Many of you will already know Aoife as she has over 44k followers on her social media, where she shares accessible, evidence based information on women’s health and pelvic health with tens of thousands of women across Ireland. Aoife’s instagram, Aoife’s Tiktok

AMA Guidelines

Please remember:

• This AMA is for general educational purposes only.
• Aoife cannot provide personalised medical advice, diagnose medical conditions, interpret scans or test results, or comment on individual cases.
• Please avoid sharing personal or identifying medical information in your questions.
• Keep all discussion respectful and in line with our community rules.

Aoife will begin answering questions on Friday, so get your questions in below!

A huge thank you to Aoife for taking the time to join our community, we’re delighted to have her here.

Following user requests, we are now allowing members to create their own custom flairs to represent their location and/or illnesses.

We ask that you please stick to the following format:

Location - Illness/Condition(s)
Example: Dublin - POTS, Migraine, PMOS

This helps keep flairs consistent and makes it easier for members to connect with others who may share similar experiences.

How to add or customise your user flair:

1. Go to the subreddit homepage.

2. Tap the three dots (•••) in the top right corner.

3. Select “Change user flair.”

4. Select “Add your own flair”.

5. Enter your chosen location and/or conditions using the format above.

6. Save your flair.

You can update your flair at any time if your circumstances or preferences change.

We’re delighted to announce that Aoife Harvey, founder of Women’s Health Dublin, will be joining us for an AMA on Friday, 10th July.

Women’s Health Dublin is a specialist physiotherapy clinic dedicated exclusively to women’s health, supporting women through every stage of life. From pelvic pain, bladder and bowel concerns, painful sex, pregnancy and postpartum recovery, to menopause and beyond, the clinic’s mission is to educate, support and empower women to live a life without limitations.

Many of you may already know Aoife from Instagram and TikTok, where she has built a community of over 45,000 followers, using her platform to share evidence based information and break down the stigma around women’s health.

We’re really looking forward to having Aoife with us and hope this AMA will give our community the chance to learn more, ask questions and have open conversations about topics that often don’t get enough attention.

Keep an eye out for our AMA thread in the next few weeks, where you’ll be able to submit your questions.

Please note: This AMA is for general information only. Aoife won’t be able to provide personalised medical advice, diagnose medical conditions or comment on individual cases.