We tend to think expertise comes from years of studying, framed degrees and letters behind a name. Malcolm Gladwell famously argued that it takes around 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert.
But there is another kind of expertise we rarely acknowledge, one that doesn’t come from textbooks or white coats. It comes from living inside the same body every day for decades.
A 40-year-old woman has spent well over 350,000 hours living in her own body and, whether she knows it or not, she is undeniably the world’s foremost expert on that body.
As a female health advocate, I have spent years focused on the ways healthcare has failed women. We know women have historically been excluded from research. We know conditions that predominantly affect women remain underfunded. We know too many women leave appointments feeling unheard or dismissed. Those shortcomings are real, and they deserve our continued attention.
But while we have been working to improve the healthcare system, I believe we have overlooked something equally important. Because when we break down healthcare into a simple equation, it is the doctor and the patient. And both are experts.
Along with countless conversations with women, an appointment with my neurologist really cemented this for me.
Migraine sufferers know that neurology appointments are like four-leaf clovers. They are hard to find, but when you do, you hold on to them dearly. These appointments also tend to function around one important piece of paper: the migraine tracker. So imagine my panic when, as I was walking out the door, I went into my office to grab my tracker, and it just wasn’t there. I tore through the room with no luck. Three months of meticulous data had seemingly vanished. With minutes to spare, I frantically scribbled down what I could remember: days with a headache, days with a migraine, and days I used my rescue medication. I pieced it together as best I could.
I arrived at the appointment with my stomach in knots. The moment I walked in, my doctor reached out his hand for the tracker. I had my scribbled paper in my hand, but as I sat down, I instinctively pulled it toward my chest.
“I am so sorry, but I don’t have my tracker today. I couldn’t find it. But…I did write down everything I could remember from the past few months.”
As I handed over my scribbled mess, I could see the annoyance on his face. He explained that without the full information, the reliable data, he couldn’t know for certain what had helped, what had made things worse, or whether the treatment was working. He suggested that we continue with the same treatment, handed me another tracker and sent me on my way.
I left feeling disorganized, irresponsible and more than a little embarrassed, especially as a health advocate who encourages patients to prepare for these types of interactions with their physicians.
What initially felt like a lesson about organization, and my lack of it at that moment, eventually became something larger. It became a lesson about understanding my role as a patient.
I came to realize that my neurologist’s frustration proved something I hadn’t fully understood before. Despite all of his medical expertise, he couldn’t evaluate my treatment without the information that only I could provide. One of the most important pieces of the diagnostic puzzle lived in my own observations.
That appointment shifted a lot for me. It made it clear that while the neurologist was the expert in migraine disease, I was the expert in my own migraines. We weren’t competing against each other; we were complementing each other.
For women, this expertise is even more important because so many conditions rely on symptoms, patterns, and changes that only the individual experiencing them can describe. And when those observations are dismissed or overlooked or not communicated, critical pieces of the clinical picture disappear with them.
The best healthcare has always depended on two people bringing different knowledge into the room. One understands medicine, the other understands the body medicine is trying to help.
We should absolutely continue advocating for better research, better education, and better healthcare for women. But while that work continues, we don’t have to wait to recognize the expertise we already possess.
The next time you walk into a medical appointment, remember that your doctor isn’t the only expert in the room. Your observations, your patterns, and your lived experience are an essential part of the clinical picture, and they deserve to be brought into the conversation.
