Don’t be Fooled and Exploited:

Menopause marketers are literally capitalizing on your distress and fears.

My exasperation over the omnipresence of menopause content – much of it based in complete horse sh*t, is mounting on a daily basis.

As a women’s health care specialist, I am pleased to see more of a spotlight on mid-life women’s discomforts. However, the “menopause moment” occurring worldwide right now has a dark side which seems to be gaining momentum by the millisecond.

Estrogen infused face creams, the recommendation that all women can and will benefit from hormone replacement therapy and the billion-dollar industry of untested dietary supplements is capitalizing on women’s normal discomforts and reinterpreting them as evidence of disease. To make matters worse, many of the interventions proposed are not only costly and potentially dangerous but worst of all, enhancing the notion that women’s aging – in and of itself – is a “problem needing to be reversed/fixed/ameliorated/eliminated.”

Should you be a woman who isn’t aging, therein lies the biggest and saddest fact of all - you died young. While care of mid-life and older women does include consideration of hormone replacement not everyone needs this. Vaginal estrogen products do help most women feel more comfortable and they prevent UTIs. As far HRT in general, there is no absolute about this and all women need to be treated as individuals when it comes to recommending this or not. The human body isn’t designed to last forever and with this comes a multitude of discomforts and troubles. What all women do need is a truly wholistic approach that looks at quality of life in its totality. Insulin insensitivity, abnormal blood pressure levels, prevention of cardiac events, orthopedic health, and prevention/treatment of depression are often being eclipsed by the false promise that hormone replacement (i.e. estrogen, progesterone, testosterone) is the answer to all that ails you. This simply isn’t accurate.

Call me a broken record but I cannot help but sniff-out the capitalistic and often male-model of vitality in all this crap. Forever an overlay in our women’s brains and the filter through which all things seem to pass through for inspection and approval, the idea that women should somehow continue to be their perky, sexy, engaged, all giving and available regardless of age and health is, to me, cruel. Being older changes us. This is simply a statement of fact.

In my world view, what my peri and postmenopausal patients often need more than hormone replacement is a more robust sense of humor and more delineated boundaries that afford them time for self-care, pleasure and rest.