The human body is a fascinating, wildly complicated thing. Many of us, though, go through life without ever knowing how it truly works, its physical and emotional underpinnings shrouded in mystery. After years of living like this herself, award-winning journalist and author Polly Vernon found herself asking too many questions about her own body, without knowing the answers.

Her newly-released book, How the Female Body Works: (In all its wild, miraculous glory), charts her mission to uncover these answers, providing a complete guide to the female body, interviewing an array of experts in the process: neuroscientists, academics, psychologists and many more. In light of its release, we visited Polly at her North London home to discuss the creation of her book, delving into what sparked the idea to write it, how the experience has changed her perspective and why reading it is like therapy.

Within your book, you speak with a variety of different professionals, from neuroscientists to academics, with the aim of gaining a broad perspective on how the female body works. What would you say the most surprising thing you found out was, that perhaps you hadn’t considered or had misunderstood previously?

Honestly, that’s impossible to answer. I think there is something that blew my mind, and continues to blow my mind, on every single page. Everything from exactly how your brain controls your hormones, to: you shouldn’t wear knickers in bed at night. Overall, I’m massively impressed by women’s bodies, though. They’re so incredibly clever! And one thing I took away is: they really try hard to do their best by us. Even when they’re getting it all wrong — they’re still really trying. So we should do our best by them, too.

Your book unpacks lots of fascinating scientific information in a way that’s accessible, often weaving elements of humour throughout. Why do you feel it’s important to broach these topics, which can often seem complex and intimidating, in this way?

Ah that was sort of the whole point! I want as many people as possible — women and men — to read it and understand it! To not feel locked out of vital knowledge about their own bodies, by heavy going academic language. And because I didn’t know any of this stuff either, so I sort of needed to explain it to myself — a very non-medically trained person — in normal-person-speak, which is how I then explain it to the reader. And crucially: I didn’t want it to be boring! I wanted it to be fun and funny and surprising and moving. It’s absolutely not a text book. It’s a story, in a way. It’s ALL our stories.

“I had too many questions about my own body not to write this book — I suddenly found myself getting quite deluged by them. I am a journalist and my instinct is if I have a question, somebody’s going to be able to answer it for me.”

“I want as many people as possible — women and men — to read it and understand it! To not feel locked out of vital knowledge about their own bodies, by heavy going academic language.”

Would you say there were any challenges or hurdles you had to overcome in creating your book?

I mean, it was an epic challenge! I adored doing it, but it was so much work. Books are so weird, because you have to totally ignore how much work they’re going to be at the beginning and just get stuck in and hope you finish it. But this one was a load more work again, because of its nature. Learning a massive subject from scratch, so far out of my comfort zone, interviewing a load of terrifyingly clever and informed experts — I mean, ‘daunting’ doesn’t really cover it. But I kind of took it one interview at a time, then, one chapter at a time. I let my editors see the chapters as I wrote them, which meant I knew at least that they felt I was going in the right direction. But I was also so excited by the interviews, and by the process of learning so much, and that got me through the trickier stretches.

What do you want readers to take away from your book?

That thing I mentioned before, the experience being like therapy, where they feel like they know themselves more completely. I think that naturally leads to you liking, loving, respecting your body more, and taking better care of it. And I also really want it to make women feel more confident and empowered in asking for the help we need and deserve. We tolerate far FAR more than we should, before we seek help. I’d like to see that ending. Oh and if anyone in government reads it: a massive influx of funding into women’s healthcare and medical research — which is criminally under-resourced.