The whole experience of being a woman has changed over the past 100 years. Our emancipation has brought so much. It’s also brought a whole stack of BS that women have to contend with.
For a start the message to grin and bear menopause is complete BS. Feeling hot, tired, cranky, teary, itchy, un-sexy, achy and bloated can all be totally natural at this time of life. But so are tuberculosis and rat infestations. It doesn’t mean you need to surrender to the authentic experience without at least trying to make your life more bearable.

Hot flashes, experienced by 75% of women around menopause can range from mildly annoying to debilitating. For most, when it comes to hot flushes, time can be a healer and the flushes will fade (average 7.4 years but you might be lucky and only get them for a year.) Vaginal symptoms on the other hand, will never get better and will only get worse. Studies tell us that 80% of women over 65 have at least some vaginal menopause symptoms such as dryness, itch and urine leakage. Endured as “just part of getting older”, women don’t talk to each other about those issues and we sure as hell don’t talk to our doctors about it. We stop talking to our partners about it and just buy continence pads and avoid sex like the plague. That’s complete BS when we have great remedies in abundance.

On top of that we put up with insomnia, mood swings, aches and pains and bloating, just believing there’s nothing that can be done. But lots can be done. Take hot flushes. HRT it is up to 98% effective for combatting them! That kind of efficacy is close to unheard of in medicine. If we had medication with those stats for heart disease and diabetes, we’d all live to 150! And yet HRT is still often taboo.

When the Women’s Health Initiative study first reported a link between taking HRT and developing breast cancer and heart disease, women- and their doctors panicked. Suddenly a mere hot flush seemed like a trivial complaint in comparison to dying of cancer. Most women refused to take it, their doctor’s wouldn’t prescribe it and governments made drug companies plaster warnings all over packs of it. Those women who went cap in hand to a doctor begging for some relief from their menopause symptoms were given an ear bashing and then kept their prescriptions a secret.

We know now of course that the risks posed by taking HRT are in fact pretty minor. And probably only for particular women on particular forms of HRT that are rarely prescribed any more. Not everyone needs HRT. If you have healthy bones, have only a couple hot flashes a week, aren’t moody, exhausted and your vagina is pinging on overdrive, why would you bother taking any medication? If you have a strong aversion to HRT, you have other options. Simple interventions like hypnosis, complementary therapies and prescription drugs from your doctor all work pretty well.

My passion is to give you choices, empowerment and agency over this time in your life, free of unnecessary fear, guilt and shame, and able to enjoy the second era of your life with as much gusto as the first!!