The Drama is Building in the Menopause Space: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Let it Shake You

Lately the women’s health and meno-verse has just felt so, well, intense. 

Every time I open my Instagram app I feel like I’m being yelled at. 

GLP-1’s are the devil!

NEVER use pellets! 

Don’t eat that! 

Walk more. Lift more. Stress less. 

I spend all of my time learning and testing the best interventions for midlife health, and it still stresses me out and makes me question myself. 

Menopause is one of the fastest growing industries, and women in midlife have the biggest buying power of any consumer group (I see you there, making all the Amazon decisions 👀). 

And what I know to be true is that you are tired of being sold to and yelled at AND having all the responsibility. 

I know I am. 

I have to take aggressively good care of my body, eat right, stretch, walk, rest and use the sauna, otherwise my reserve for all the other responsibilities I have takes a serious hit. 

If I was looking for a provider to help me navigate the myriad tools and interventions available to me to help me with my health in midlife - I’d be looking for someone who already assumes I’m smart AF. And who knows I’m not interested in drama (I have enough of it). 

And here’s where the entire meno-movement has gone wrong:

It’s rife with drama. 

Two drama-laden newsflashes appeared in my social feeds this week that I think are worthy of our attention. 

One:

Menopause giants Drs Kelly Casperson, Mary Claire Haver, and Louise Newson are currently in Australia speaking at a privately hosted large-scale event to raise menopause awareness. 

It’s an impressive lineup, and even though my own clinical practices differ from the speakers, I heartily support them and love the public traction. 

Also, what a cute name: “So Hot Right Now.”

But The Guardian published an article this week “As menopause wars rage” all about the controversy the event is inciting amongst “menopause experts,” including a member of the Australian Menopause Society, who, you guessed it, is pissed because the event isn’t sponsored by the AMS. 

I’m sorry, but this is comical. 

Half of the entire world population will go through menopause. 

And less than 5% of eligible women in the US are currently receiving hormone replacement therapy. 

This is like Whole Foods saying that no one else can feed the planet. 

The problem is too big. 

No one gets to own it. 

It reminds me of debates within the birth world - medical organizations and hospitals desperately want to standardize and formalize a life event that’s been happening since the beginning of time. I’m not saying that the medical industrial complex doesn’t serve an important purpose (I delivered babies in a hospital setting for half my career). What I’m saying is that it’s paternalistic to think that there’s one best or right way to do anything that’s physiologic - from the body (and not from something manmade). 

I’m available to be told that there’s a best way to land a plane. 

There is not, however, a best way to treat or manage menopause and hormone decline. 

It’s distinctly personal. 

When things get personal, we like to lean on personalities and leaders. That’s what the aforementioned doctors have done - they’ve created a likability within a movement that used to feel stale and gross. And the establishment hates it, because establishments always want to retain control. 

Speaking of - let’s move on to the next bit of news. 

Two:

Two Ohio clinics were recently shut down and their licenses to distribute drugs were revoked when they were discovered to be selling research-grade GLP-1 peptides. 

A physician influencer posted the story citing the “dangers of non-FDA approved drugs” and the usual suspects all chimed in with choruses of “safety over pricing, always.”  Smh. 

Let’s break this down. 

Research-grade peptides are NOT for human use. They are manufactured by all manners of underground folks and they specifically say on the vials that they should not be injected into humans. Some of the companies making them are utilized by bio-hackers and health renegades - and that’s their choice. But no intelligent medical provider should be selling these to anyone, ever. 

However, there’s so much witch-hunting that people jumped on this story and celebrated the disciplinary action, and demonized the compounding of glp-1 medications. 

These are not the same things. Not even close. 

I’ve written an entire article for our website on the safety and utility of compounding medications HERE. I recommend you read it, especially if you’ve fallen prey to the fear propagation of the “only FDA approved” movement. 

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to me is that women are getting safe and thoughtful care, and access to the most advanced treatments to help them avoid the consequences of aging and hormone decline. The end. I don’t have time for drama, for throwing people under the bus, or screaming on a hilltop that I’m better than someone else. 

There is enough drama in my own house with my four kids, 12 and under. 

If you’re going to thrive in your forties and beyond, you’ve probably already begun to realize that there’s no time for drama.  Don’t engage in nonsense. Trust your gut, and find the leaders and people who resonate with the way YOU want to do life and health. 

I used to whisper to new moms in the hospital “you’re his mother, you know what’s best.” 

That’s still true. You still know. Don’t let the naysayers scare you.