Did you know October is Menopause Month?

If this helps put menopause in the spotlight resulting in better funding for studies, then we are all here for it, right? Hooray!

You know how I was trying to post about the gap in knowledge for treating menopause?

The one caused by having 1.1 billion women in menopause by 2025 and only 20% of all 2022 graduating medical residents (in OB-Gyn and Internal Medicine specialties) having been trained in treating menopause? A big gap in knowledge.

Yeah.

And there is a big gap in research funding to address the situation and initiate studies in the treatment of menopause.

There are a few things that have to happen. The US National Institute of Health (NIH) needs to assign a dedicated code for menopause research. As it is now, there is no dedicated code. So anyone wanting to collect data on menopause and advance research must manually go through each study mentioning “menopause” and physically add up the findings. Haha, not exactly a streamlined method.

In contrast, there is a dedicated code for prostrate cancer.

Since 1993 there has been an acknowledgment of the gap in healthcare research, and a law was passed requiring NIH to research men and women equally. The NIH now has an office dedicated to women’s health studies. But this 30 year anniversary of the initiative to improve women’s health research is not showing much progress.

Congresswomen Yvette Clarke (D-NY) will introduce a new Menopause Research Bill asking the NIH to fund menopause research later this month (October 2023).

Thanks to menopause advocates Dr. Sharon Malone and reproductive rights lawyer Jennifer Weiss-Wolf asking the US government to address healthcare gaps, and bi-partisan support from a bill proposed by representative Cindy Axne (D-IA) and David McKinley (R-WV) who jointly introduced the Menopause Research Act of 2022, Representative Clarke will use the momentum to find support for her proposed bill.

I am so impressed by Dr. Sharon Malone, who has a long history of providing Ob-Gyn care for the Washington DC area and advocating for women’s health issues, especially menopause. She is the Chief Medical Officer for tele-health provider My Alloy. This service is backed by doctors trained in treating menopause and I am celebrating Menopause Month by signing up for this service.

Per the My Alloy website ” … our treatments work, are recommended by the North American Menopause Society, and approved by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Malone and our Medical Advisory Board.”

Dear Reader, I signed up!

Please note: I am not affiliated with My Alloy, I am paying my own charges. I just want to experience HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and see if it helps with some of my menopause symptoms. I’m looking at you Joint Pain, Tinnitus, Palpitations, Brain Fog, Insomnia and you too, Urogenital Symptoms. Bonus points for the support for my Bone Health, Heart Disease prevention, and Immune System boost.

Are you using HRT? How is it helping you?

Thanks to some sort of awakening to the gaps of knowledge around care and treatment of menopause there are some books being published next year that I can’t wait to read.

Dr. Sharon Malone has a book coming called Grown Women Talk, April 2024 and available for pre-order.

Dr. Mary Claire Haver has a book coming called The New Menopause, May 2024 and available for pre-order.

And I found an organization forming around menopause care, funding and advocacy called “Let’s Talk Menopause”.

Menopause is getting some overdue attention. We now need serious medical funding to support further studies.

Here is a list of menopause vocabulary words and phrases that will help you talk to your health provider about your menopause symptoms:

• peri-menopause: uneven fluctuations in the production of estrogen in the years leading up to menopause, at the approximate age of late 30s – 45
• menopause: 12 months after the last period, at the approximate age of 45 – 55, the ovaries have stopped releasing eggs {surgical removal of ovaries or uterus will cause premature menopause}
• post-menopause: the day after reaching menopause and every day of the rest of a woman’s life
• HRT: Hormone replacement therapy, a combination of estrogen and progesterone {for women who needed to have their uterus removed, estrogen only} and offer relief from symptoms of menopause, further study is needed but may also help prevent heart disease and osteoporosis and improve the immune system
• bio-identical estrogen: chemically identical to estrogen produced in the body; estradiol and estriol, delivered in form of patch, gel, cream, capsules, tablets
• bio-identical progesterone: chemically identical to progesterone produced in the body, taken to “oppose” estrogen and prevent the uterine lining from growing

The more we talk about menopause and post-menopause, the better we will understand and appreciate the ways our bodies are reacting and adjusting to the changes to our loss of estrogen. When we think back to when our bodies were going through puberty, we can probably remember the dramatic changes we had in our bodies. We might remember feeling more mood swings and differences in our energy. And during the time of having regular periods and menstruating, we felt great differences in our moods, period symptoms and energy. It’s natural to expect the same type of changes in the feelings of our bodies and mood and energy when we are post-menopausal. For some, these hormonal changes are more dramatic, or more subtle, or more nuanced. Every body experiences post-menopause symptoms differently.

I wonder if post-menopause is a sort of return for me, to who I was before the period of time when I was fertile?

We will spend more of our lives in post-menopause than in any of the other stages of our lifetime if we live to our 80s. I am hoping to find a way to make that time fruitful, liberating and full of meaning.

We have much to look forward to post-menopause when we optimize our health and habits.

How are you handling this phase of your life? Feeling bold? Feeling old?

How can I help?