BBC1, 8PM Tomorrow (Monday 30/9). Panorama - The Menopause Industry.

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Documentary presented by Kirsty Wark investigating the multi million pound global menopause industry.

Should be interesting.

Thanks for this. Kirsty Wark did a similar program, is this a repeat or new i wonder?

@ssd This is a brand new documentary.

Kind of dreading it, menopause brashing at its very finest when half the country aren’t even tested hormonally, let alone what stores are or aren’t in certain parts of the UK selling menopausal aids.

It’s no different to other gynaecological matters ie. a fibroid can be solved be drinking heavy amounts of raspberry leaf tea, caster oil packs, apple cider vinegar, losing weight despite if you did this before it came on and whatever else.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023jdn

I understand that Newson Health's prescribing wil be coming in for some criticism during the documentary (see synopsis).

I’m going to watch this with interest.

The BBC is also headlining it on their Home page, online, and says the clinic is being investigated. It's always sad to see this kind of thing because there are always two sides to the story and what you/we read is not always accurate or without a pre-determined agenda.

Kirsty Walk herself is using HRT and she announced this some time ago when she said she started using it at a later age (after suffering for years) so maybe she won't be biased! Who knows.

The one thing I object to is the 'menopause bandwagon' of face creams etc which so many companies have started to produce (and they are no different to anything already on the market!) And the huge growth of supplements costing £££ aimed at women (and there is no credible science behind them.)

Looking forward to this.

The prog intro as on the link says it's investigating the industry and the growth of supplements etc aimed at women.

I guess the discussion will be that so many women are still afraid of HRT (based on old science) and are turning to these other supplements instead.

Thanks for posting. Will defo tape this.

The menopause situation of prescribing the same stuff for every women 'of an age' without any kind of hormone testing first is utterly disgusting.

You can't even get iron tablets prescribed without tests first yet they don't test for this, something every women will go through.

Proof positive that women are treated like 'small men' in the nhs, because that's not a problem men have so they don't know how to deal with it...

Sorry about that rant, came out of nowhere

You won't need to record it- BBC says it's already available on iPlayer.
As for your 'rant' (don't really want to get bogged down here with this!) but it's well established by science that blood tests for estrogen don't work (they need 24 hour constant monitoring to show anything.) It really is a case of titrating the dose so symptoms are improved.

Thanks I'll watch it.

Article posted today -

TV menopause doctor concerns probed by watchdog www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8e5y4e83lo

They covered this on the Today programme on Radio 4 about half an hour ago. The BBC are definitely advertising it! It's good to investigate but I hope it doesn't put women off overall.

Just watched it on iplayer. It's main negative about Newsom clinic is it's willingness to prescribe above 100mg levels of oestrogen, which doesn't happen on NHS and exceeds guidelines. They show 3 examples of women who believe their prescriptions from Newsom clinic were wrong (too high). Watching it my conclusion is that it would be just as easy to find countless women who have also had the 'wrong' prescription of HRT causing further issues on the NHS. 3 women complaining out of 46,000 patients is not representative of Newsoms overall quality of service. It is good for women to be aware of what recommended HRT levels are, and to feel fully informed if they go over such levels. But it'd be negative if this documentary caused Newsom huge damage IMO. I found her info available online to be a lifeline when I first sought information about menopause. She is a strong advocate for our right to access treatment in peri/meno and I'm thankful for that.

Sadly, there has been an on going agenda to criticise Newson for some time. My guess is that some people, possibly in the profession, don't like the 'fame' she's achieved and are looking for ways to discredit her.

The other factor is that her team which used to be a handful of drs, has increased hugely. I was shocked to see just how many drs are on it. There will be drs there who aren't qualified much beyond a GP (they've perhaps done a short course on HRT.) There is always going to be a variation in care with such a big organisation. Having said that it is inexplicable why someone (if this is true) was on 300mcg patch and also told to reduce their progesterone (which is what the prog seems to state.)
The usual practice for off-licence doses is regular scans (maybe 6 monthly for such high doses.)

This is a bit outing maybe but who cares…

I was a patient at the Newson clinic. I have multiple complex autoimmune issues and was found to have stopped producing oestrogen completely aged 37. They put me on increasingly huge doses of oestrogen and it made my lupus and other issues flare up terribly. They refused to liaise with my NHS consultants despite me querying whether I was doing the right thing by being on such a high dose. I was having horrendous bleeding with huge clots and in the end I just really felt I couldn’t trust them to understand the way all my issues interacted with each other so (after spending the best part of £600) I went to my GP and they told me to completely stop the HRT and referred me to the menopause service on the NHS. (Gynaecologist).

I was sent for a scan which was normal but they recommended I had a hystoscopy to make sure nothing sinister was going on. This was not without risk for me because I have Addisons disease which makes everything medical procedure wise very risky. I had to have a spinal anaesthetic etc.

This was found to be thankfully fine and the bleeding had stopped completely since stopping the HRT. I am now - under the guidance of the nhs gynaecologist- slowly reintroducing HRT at a very slow and low level to try and get the balance right between not bleeding and having some benefit of the HRT. (I have horrible sweats and other issues).

I am furious with Newson clinic because I feel they’re very much a money making machine and do not take into account their patients other conditions which can be very complex. Their usual answer to everything- as documented well in the articles etc- is to keep increasing the oestrogen. That can’t be the right answer for everyone. It wasn’t for me.

What kind of timescale was that over?
Normally for high doses you'd have a scan every few months or at the very least annually.

Did they increase the progesterone in line with the estrogen dose?
I wonder why they wouldn't liaise with your other consultants?

The increase was over a 2-3 month period, then continuing at the higher dose for another 3-4 months. I queried it many times but was told it was just my body adjusting. I even sent photos of the clots I was passing as they were huge. No scans. No idea why they wouldn’t speak to any of my 4 nhs specialists. I even contacted the nhs specialists myself and asked them to write to Newson but Newson refused to reply to them. Progesterone wasn’t changed from the beginning- I was on the mini pill, they added in 100mg utrogestan and this remained the same.

I'm under the care of a meno specialist (a prof at a large teaching hospital in London, who does a lot of research) thanks to a complicated menopause. The highest dose of oestrogen he would give me was 100mg. Above this, it's not just cancer, it's also blood clots and stroke risk. And I think women have been led to expect that HRT will make them feel like they are pre-meno again, which it doesn't, it just takes the edge off the menopause symptoms to make things bearable.

Doses above this have not been properly tested to show that they're safe. Newson's smug claim that they haven't been shown to be unsafe is true but misleading - at the moment there haven't been decent clinical trials and the best that can be said is that we don't know for definite either way and there's good reason to believe that it's a bad idea.

I’ll be watching. I had a rubbish experience with a different private clinic.Hormones tested etc but only the sex ones and constantly missing indicators of an under active thyroid so constantly adjusting HRT treatment only to never really reach a point of feeling ok. 😠

That sounds awful for you.
I know that they say bleeding is to be expected with combined continuous HRT for up to 6 months, but that's spotting or a slight bleed, not what you had.
I'm sorry you had to go through that.
The BMS suggests doubling progesterone to 200mgs (or maybe even more for very high doses of estrogen.)
However, they also say that women shouldn't need extremely high doses of estrogen.

I'm all for individualised doses and ways of using HRT which are different to the standard ones which are monitored carefully, (not necessarily high doses) with a consultant, but your experience sounds awful.

Is the person you see Mr/Prof P?
Interesting about blood clots as I assumed that wasn't an issue with transdermal estrogen.

I’ve been a Newson patient for about 4 years and only have positive things to say. My dose is the high end of recommended and they are very open and answer all my questions. I have regular blood work.

What makes me enraged is that I have to pay for this because my health trust and GP are horrible.

Personally I’d like to see an equivalent of the Cass Inquiry and Cass Report take place into women’s menopausal health and safety. All the stats examined openly, all the studies analysed - from GP surgeries, NHS clinics, hospitals, private clinics. Open and transparent terms of reference.

My experience with the NHS has been beyond crap. I have yet to meet a GP who has fully read the NICE guidelines (let alone my notes), but I bet they’ll read these BBC headlines and let me know at my review tomorrow in their latest attempt to take HRT away that oestrogen is a terrible thing and to stop using it because my non-existent womb might suffer.

<sigh>

I don't know how you made that leap that oestrogen is all evil from the BBC reporting

Like many things in life you can have too much of a good thing, it's about balance not extremes

We need food to live but too much kills us
We need oxygen to live but too much kills us