Ancient genes combined with exposure to modern chemicals may help explain why some women develop endometriosis, new research suggests.

The study found six genetic variants that were more common in women with the condition.

Some of these variations appear to have been inherited from early human ancestors, including Neanderthals and other ancient populations.

Dr Anna Mantzouratou, a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University who supervised the research, said: “The variants we saw have been part of the human genome for a very long time, but the modern chemical environment is new, and we’re beginning to understand how these interactions might influence conditions like endometriosis.”

Researchers at Bournemouth University identified five genes most likely to be linked to endometriosis, which are also particularly sensitive to common chemicals that can interfere with hormones and disrupt the immune system.

Using the NHS’s Genomics England database, the team compared these genes in 19 women diagnosed with endometriosis against women without the condition.

Several of the variations occur in genes known to react to chemicals once considered harmless but now found in plastics, cosmetics and household products.

The researchers believe this combination of inherited genetic traits and chemical exposure could disrupt the immune system, potentially causing the inflammation associated with endometriosis.

Around one in ten women of reproductive age have endometriosis, a gynaecological condition that can cause severe pain and inflammation.

“Endometriosis has come to the forefront in recent years and a lot more people understand what it is, but it remains difficult to diagnose early and often goes untreated,” said Amelia Warren, who led the study as part of her master’s degree.

“Ultrasounds do not usually pick up the small signs and pelvic pain is often assumed to be normal for a woman during her period.

“As a result, it’s typically the most severe cases that get diagnosed.

Warren added: “I think a lot of women with endometriosis feel that they are not being listened to and nothing is being done.

“Showing them that we are trying to do something for them and trying to make a difference is really important for me.”

By Zahra Bhatti, founder, Véa

Women are achieving more than ever, yet many feel constantly mentally stretched and overwhelmed.

Emotional load has become the new glass ceiling.

What is Emotional Load?

Emotional load is not emotionality; it is the ongoing internal coordination of life – the feeling of carrying too much, tracking too much and anticipating too much.

It includes anticipating needs, noticing problems, remembering details, absorbing tension and managing the emotional atmosphere of others.

Sociologist Allison Daminger (2019) describes this as cognitive labour: the planning, organising and foresight that hold the fabric of daily functioning together.

Women disproportionately carry this work across cultures and industries.

They take on the psychological weight of remembering, checking in, smoothing conflict and holding the mental map of what everyone needs next.

This is layered on top of professional responsibilities and domestic expectations, forming a continuous background process that men, statistically, are less likely to absorb (ONS, 2016; Haupt et al., 2023).

The result is not busyness but fragmentation – the steady splitting of attention across competing emotional and logistical demands.

The Neuroscience Behind the Burden

The cognitive and emotional systems involved in emotional load are the same ones required for decision making, creativity and strategic thinking.

When they become overloaded, performance declines even in the most capable individuals. Working memory, the brain’s capacity to hold multiple pieces of information at once, is extremely limited. It breaks down under multitasking and rapid switching (Marois and Ivanoff, 2005).

Emotional monitoring, planning and interpersonal sensitivity draw from the same neural resources as focus and problem solving (Ochsner et al., 2012).

Emotional suppression – managing others’ emotions while sidelining one’s own – further increases cognitive fatigue (Goldin et al., 2008). Similarly, women are also biologically more reactive to relational stress.

Research indicates stronger amygdala responses to interpersonal tension (Bangasser et al., 2009) and a stress pattern known as tend-and-befriend, in which oxytocin amplifies emotional awareness rather than dampening it (Taylor et al., 2000).

In other words, women are both socially expected and biologically primed to carry a greater share of emotional responsibility. Over time, this does not simply create stress – it creates a form of cognitive erosion.

How Emotional Load Becomes a Glass Ceiling

When mental bandwidth is consistently used to manage the emotional and relational needs of others, less of it is available for the types of thinking that leadership requires: long-term planning, deep focus, innovation and strategic clarity.

High emotional load siphons the cognitive resources needed for complex problem solving (Sweller, 1988). It pushes women into organisational and interpersonal roles that maintain team functioning but carry little formal recognition.

This invisible work gradually expands until it displaces higher-leverage opportunities. Many women describe a version of burnout that is not exhaustion but depletion: being mentally full yet intellectually under-stimulated, over-functioning yet under-supported.

Studies also show women are more likely to internalise this overload, interpreting burnout as a personal failing rather than a structural imbalance (Maslach and Leiter, 2016).

Emotional exhaustion remains one of the strongest predictors of women leaving organisations altogether (Leiter and Maslach, 2009); McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, 2023).

This is the quiet barrier that does not show up in diversity reports – a barrier built not from corporate policy but from constant cognitive interruption.

Where Femtech Still Falls Short

The femtech ecosystem has made extraordinary progress but it still treats emotional and cognitive experience as peripheral.

Today we can track ovulation to the hour, optimise sleep through biometric sensors and monitor HRV daily. Yet, there is no equivalent system for understanding emotional load, cognitive fragmentation or the cumulative mental strain that shapes a woman’s day more than her steps or calories ever will.

Most wellbeing tools focus on surface-level state change – a meditation, a breathwork exercise, a quick reset. These are useful but do not resolve the deeper issue: the mind is full.

There is too much unprocessed emotional material, too many unresolved micro-tensions, too many open cognitive loops. Without integration, clarity does not return.

This gap is precisely why tools like Véa need to exist.

How Technology Can Reduce Cognitive Fragmentation

Technology cannot remove emotional load entirely but it can radically transform how women process and carry it. One of the most robust research findings in psychology is the effect of expressive writing.

Putting thoughts and emotions into words reduces amygdala activation (Lieberman et al., 2007), improves cognitive processing, decreases rumination and strengthens prefrontal regulation (Pennebaker and Smyth, 2016).

Journaling does what the overloaded mind cannot: it externalises, organises and integrates.

When combined with AI, this becomes even more powerful. AI can detect emotional patterns humans miss, surface unacknowledged stressors and nudge micro-reflections that prevent overload from building.

It can help women close mental loops before they accumulate into cognitive clutter.

Done correctly, this is not therapy mimicry but cognitive hygiene. It reduces fragmentation and restores mental bandwidth.

That restoration – not motivation, discipline or resilience – is what many women are missing.

Reframing a Key Metric in Women’s Health

If femtech is serious about advancing women’s wellbeing, it must recognise emotional load as a fundamental determinant of health, performance and possibility.

The next decade of innovation will not come from tracking more biological inputs but from understanding and reducing the cognitive and emotional burdens women carry invisibly every day.

This shift matters because capacity is not an infinite resource.

Emotional load drains the clarity women need to lead, create and thrive. Addressing it removes a barrier that has held women back quietly but powerfully. Women do not need more advice on balance – they need more mental space.

Femtech has transformed how we care for the body.

The next transformation is caring for the mind. This is the problem Véa was built to solve: helping women process, integrate and offload the cognitive and emotional weight that has gone unrecognised for far too long.

Learn more about Véa at veajournal.app/

References

Bangasser, D.A., Eck, S.R. and Ordoñes Sanchez, E. (2019). ‘Sex differences in stress reactivity in arousal and attention systems’, Neuropsychopharmacology, 44(1), pp. 129–139. doi: 10.1038/s41386-018-0137-2.

Daminger, A. (2019). ‘The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor’, American Sociological Review, 84(4), pp. 609–633.

Goldin, P.R., McRae, K., Ramel, W. and Gross, J.J. (2007). ‘The Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation: Reappraisal and Suppression of Negative Emotion’, Biological Psychiatry, 63(6), pp. 577–586.

Haupt, A. and Gelbgiser, D. (2023). ‘The gendered division of cognitive household labor, mental load, and family–work conflict in European countries’, European Societies, 26(3), pp. 828–854.

Leiter, M.P. and Maslach, C. (2009). ‘Nurse turnover: the mediating role of burnout’, Journal of Nursing Management, 17(3), pp. 351–359.

Leiter, M.P. and Maslach, C. (2016). ‘Understanding the Burnout Experience: Recent Research and Its Implications for Psychiatry’, World Psychiatry, 15(2), pp. 103–111.

Lieberman, M.D., Eisenberger, N.I., Crockett, M.J., Tom, S.M., Pfeifer, J.H. and Way, B.M. (2007). ‘Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli’, Psychological Science, 18(5), pp. 421–428.

McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. (2023). Women in the Workplace 2023. Available at: https://womenintheworkplace.com/ (Accessed: 1st December 2025).

Marois, R. and Ivanoff, J. (2005). ‘Capacity limits of information processing in the brain’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(6), pp. 296–305.

Ochsner, K.N. and Gross, J.J. (2008). ‘Cognitive Emotion Regulation: Insights from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), pp. 153–158.

Office for National Statistics. (2016). Women shoulder the responsibility of unpaid work. London: ONS. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/womenshouldertheresponsibilityofunpaidwork/2016-11-10#:~:text=Women%20carry%20out%20an%20overall,to%20cooking%2C%20childcare%20and%20housework (Accessed: 1st December 2025).

Pennebaker, J.W. and Smyth, J.M. (2016). Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain. New York: Guilford Press.

Sweller, J. (1988). ‘Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on learning’, Cognitive Science, 12(2), pp. 257–285.

Taylor, S.E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B.P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, R.A. and Updegraff, J.A. (2000). ‘Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight’, Psychological Review, 107(3), pp. 411–429.

Long-term air pollution exposure is linked to more advanced heart disease, with notable differences between women and men, a large-scale study has found.

The findings show that even levels of pollution below or near regulatory standards are associated with early signs of disease, often before symptoms appear.

Felipe Castillo Aravena, study lead author and cardiothoracic imaging fellow at the University of Toronto, said: “Even at low exposure levels, air pollution is associated with more plaque in the coronary arteries.

“Overall, higher long-term exposure to air pollution was associated with more coronary artery disease on cardiac CT in both women and men.

“In women, long-term exposure to fine particulate matter was linked to higher calcium scores and more severe narrowing of the arteries.

“In men, higher long-term exposure to fine particulate matter was associated with higher calcium scores and higher plaque burden.”

Researchers analysed data from more than 11,000 adults who had undergone cardiac CT exams from 2012 through 2023 across three major hospitals in Toronto.

They linked patients’ residential postal codes with air quality data to estimate each person’s average exposure over the 10-year period prior to CT.

The study examined exposure to two common pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM2.5), tiny particles from vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions and wildfire smoke that can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a harmful gas produced mainly by burning fossil fuels.

For each increase in long-term PM2.5 of 1 microgram per cubic metre, there was an 11 per cent increase in calcium build-up in the coronary arteries, 13 per cent greater odds of more plaque and 23 per cent greater odds of obstructive disease.

Exposure to nitrogen dioxide showed similar trends, though with smaller effect sizes for every 1 part per billion increase.

Kate Hanneman, study senior author and cardiac radiologist at the University of Toronto, said: “Heart disease is the number one cause of death globally.

“The results of this study add to the growing body of evidence that air pollution is a modifiable cardiovascular risk factor and reinforce the need for further research to understand why these associations differ between men and women.”