"What we’re seeing is an incredible emergence of a for-profit industry associated with menopause"

It’s like training is a couple of half hearted lectures and then swept under the rug.

Yes. The very fact that "women's health" is a discrete medical specialism is indicative of this. As though it's a sub-branch of medicine like cardiology or pulmonology, something you can study in isolation and just tack it onto what you know about the human male default model. We're not men with a couple of slightly different add-ons. Our bodies and the whole body responses we have to hormones are fundamentally different than those which men experience.

I agree that the 'Wellness Industry' is a massive business.

But at the same time women have suffered unnecesarily for centuries during the menopause. A friend of mine just 10 years older was persuaded to take medical retirement from her job. She's now certain it was severe menopause symptoms. The highest rate of suicide among women is 48-52. I have no doubt that if men were loosing cognitive function, sweating profusely in business meetings, loosing their sex drive, suffering severe insomnia, that HRT would be free.

I'm sure HRT won't suit everyone but at least now women are at least having the chance to rry it. And there are proven significant long term health benefits.

I think GPs are generally phenomenally crap at anything related to the female reproductive system. They’re terrible with issues around puberty, period pain, heavy bleeding, etc. They get to side step contraception and abortion care if they want and they’re often fairly clueless on menopause. It’s like training is a couple of half hearted lectures and then swept under the rug.

I wish that GP's had better knowledge of menopause/peri menopause and the effect it has on women mentally as well as physically.

I unfortunately started peri in my late 30's and was fobbed off. Told I was being silly, all in my head, probably just depressed etc etc.
I thought I was losing my mind!

This bit made me laugh though,

“A normal event that affects everyone has been turned into a disease – a hormone deficiency disease, which requires diagnosis and treatment,”

Sounds just like what the genderists did with puberty.

I'm glad that menopause is being taken seriously. Obviously there will be people who want to make money out of it. That's fine. There are people who want to make money out of everything.

Looking at the impact that menopause has on women's long term health, earning power and quality of life, at population level menopause is a significant and specific phenomenon. You see it in earnings, employment engagement, suicide rates. These are material measurable impacts and it's in all of our interests to address it.

Yes menopause skincare ranges etc are a bit annoying. But this is something that has an actual tangible impact on half the population. It's not enough to talk about how we "need to just get on with it" and it isn't a sign of weakness to acknowledge challenges that people face and build in support/assistance/awareness to try and minimise or at least alleviate negative impacts.

on the subject of evolution/the menopause/raising our grandchildren/generally being a repository of wisdom...
it just occurred to me that (IIRC) lactation can be maintained post reproduction if suckling is maintained, ie if older women occasionally feed babies, maybe their grandchildren, and I wonder if that mitigates some of the ill effects of menopause???

otherwise, yes, capitalism will find a way to profit from anything eventually

The wellness industry wants to get its fingers in everywhere.

But we've also changed the definition of health care a lot over the years, so that normal bodily functions can now be seen as a problem. Once we cross that line and people start thinking that is what healthcare is, it should be no surprise that it begins to be applied more generally.

This is just what capitalism does, it identifies organic or beneficial trends or ideas, then twists it for a profit making agenda. The existence of the sharks shouldn't distract from the legit reasons to grow awareness and action where it's needed.

If anything it probably suggests there might be some need for additional regulation of certain areas of health where dishonesty is still used to fleece people of their money

Bone thinning is concerning but the evidence for magnesium is promising.

Seabuckthorn oil for vaginal atrophy.

And yes... you still have to buy these food based supplements... HRT is covered by prescription.

Lara Biden'a book on menopause is worth reading, she explains each process and offers suggestions including hormonal solutions.

Magnesium for brain fog and I used homeopathy for night sweats.. narayani climacterics

I think I've had a fairly easy ride menopause wise so far. The hot flushes haven't really bothered me (although I find them fascinating, do you get hot or do you just feel hot?). My joints ache a bit, but otherwise not so bad. Not on hrt.

I am concerned about stuff that might be going on; bone thinning, vaginal atrophy, that I'd be unaware of until....?

I think there are companies being set up to make money off this. I'd rather the money went to GPs, to women who are struggling so they can continue to work, get support to change jobs or take early retirement.

I'm damned if I see why I should suffer just so someone can say it's not an illness.

I got fed up with that in pregnancy, which is also apparently not an illness but nonetheless fucked my body up pretty well,

You can have my HRT when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.

Businesses will always come along and make money out of a growing social theme.
We've had the pink pound, green washing, the plant based plastic vegan food and now we have the menopause money making schemes.

Capitalism innit.

Meh

@alittleprivacy Yes! In Darwinian terms women beyond reproduction have a very important role in society, and it is to care and support our grown children, and enjoy and care for our grandchildren.

I dont feel oppressed by that i feel oppressed by the idea I should look glamorous and be sexual, neither of which appeals to me.

Sure i like to look well turned out but being sexy, erm no.

Many women have the menopause in their mid 40s.

Which means another 20-25 years of working before they can retire.

So half of their working life.

There is a reason we turned into little old ladies, because we kept going longer than men, whilst losing height and bone structure as we aged.

Nobody seems to be hand wringing over the suitability of men getting drugs to sort their erections out. It only seems to be women that are having to keep going through this cycle of 'nah, let's just let them suffer, its natural'.

I agree that healthcare is frequently commodified. I don't agree that medicine can be neatly divided into "real diseases" vs "natural processes". Diseases are natural processes. Toothache, appendicitis, brain tumours, and dying in labour are natural processes.

Natural processes come with some fucking horrible symptoms and it's great that medicine can relieve them.

There is nothing at all wrong with women who have menopausal symptoms wanting to relieve them and, for some women, drugs will be the right choice. But we should also be offering women other forms of therapy and, when we do prescribe drugs, it should be the drug that is right for that woman, not the one that Davina happens to be pushing.

May I ask, what natural supplements do people find effective for night sweats/ general brain fog?
I started hrt last year but feel it's not really suiting me. My ( young female) gp has been disappointingly unhelpful.

In the neo-liberal universe, everything is a commodity which can make profit for someone. Treatments for the menopause are just another commodity, a way to make money out of healthcare. Until we understand that the market cannot provide everything and that it also destroys all it touches, we will not get rid of the commodification of everything. Out of this assumption that everything can be marketed comes surrogacy, prostitution, pornography and unnecessary and expensive treatments for natural processes as well as money-spinners for real diseases, such as diabetes, where sufferers can be persuaded to buy gimmicky gadgets to control their illness, whilst health care itself is privatised and commidified before our eyes. Someone wake up, please!

One of my friends told me her (woman) doctor said all women should be on hrt because otherwise we'd all get osteoporosis. I was quite alarmed but on reflection my Mum didn't use hrt and she hasn't got osteoporosis. She's 80+ and had a really nasty fall a year ago and didn't break a thing. My (peri) menopause has been fairly uneventful although I've very much cut down on wine as that would be the only time I'd get something resembling a hot flush. I've got friends on hrt who feel it's helped them. I suppose the thing about hrt is you can try it and if you feel better, great. If you don't then stop. I'm glad women's health is being taken more seriously but there seems to be a lot of confusion around the menopause from everyone concerned. More research would be very welcome.

We are not oestrogen deficient after menopause, we have post menopausal levels of oestrogen.

The transition between these two states can be challenging, especially if we have been undernourished or been using synthetic hormones but we can support our bodies to keep the calcium in our bones and out of our blood steam and other tissues by adequate intake of magnesium.

I'm a doctor who takes HRT, but...

I am extremely sceptical of the current push to start all menopausal women on it, and especially of the suggestion that it is wrong for GPs to offer anti-depressants, for menopausal women with low mood.

Are menopausal symptoms sometimes incorrectly managed as depression? Absolutely yes. But there is a complex inter-relationship between mood and menopause. Offering some women treatment for depression can be hugely beneficial, either in conjunction with HRT or alone. Also, antidepressants can relieve hot flushes, so they are a good treatment for some women, if their main symptoms are flushes and low mood, especially if they have risk factors for side effects from HRT.

I doubt it is a coincidence that the common antidepressants' patents have expired, meaning that any pharma company can make them, and that the profits on them are now low.

It's wrong to push antidepressants at every menopausal woman with low mood, but it is equally wrong to pretend that HRT is a miracle cure for every symptom that a menopausal woman has.

I hope you get to see your doctor. The estriol cream might be all you need - it’s topical and a very low key but effective intervention, also helping to avoid UTIs. It’s the only thing I really felt I needed.

That last part is the opposite of true. Nature has us specifically living beyond menopause. It's almost unheard of for mammals to live past their reproductive viability. Yet human women live for decades beyond it. Along with a couple of species of whales. We specifically evolved to live for a long time after we can bear and raise children. It's actually why we have menopause. If nature didn't want us alive after menopause, it wouldn't exist. We'd just stop ovulating and die.

I definitely think it’s worth discussing. It does seem strange. I had an early menopause after spinal surgery. But it was troublefree apart from hot flushes. I didn’t use HRT. 20 years later, suddenly loads of people are telling me I should start HRT, and it will sort out my arthritis and weight gain. I don’t want to . It seems weird at 64, but I am trying to see my doctor to get cream for my poor fanny. I was ignoring the soreness and thinning, but 2 friends have suddenly spoken up about their horrific experiences of vaginal atrophy, and I don’t want that. It’s hard to know what to do.