There is a lot of big hall monitor energy in the peri/menopause world today.
People telling us what to think, how to feel, what to do, how to act. What to call our private parts, how to masturbate and with what, details about the foods and supplements we should and shouldn't take and eat (this week I saw someone pit a bowl of black beans against a steak in some sort of bizarre protein-off) and how to move our bodies and when.
This extends to what we should do about menopause – the biggest transition of all the transitions.
Another bizarre turn: a woman writing to a British advice column who clearly had the worst, you-should-leave-him husband ever, being told HRT might fix it.
HRT might fix it, but I doubt it. It's probably more likely to help menopause symptoms, which is all it's recommended for at the moment by the people who count.
I'd like to remind you (and myself) that there is no Board of Directors of the Way Menopause Should Be – self-appointed or otherwise. There IS a lot of confused interpretation of data, and of scientific literature, a lot of lazy repetition and sloppy reporting being done by people who don't know how to responsibly relay information and who want certain things to be true very badly. It's not a good combination.
There are people steeped in patriarchy – including women who don't know any better, or worse, those who do – who are using fear to sell services and products, or gain followers. Who want you to believe that yet again, you aren't enough, just as you are.
But could it be that all this noise is... necessary? Might it be reminding us that this is the time – of all the times – when we finally learn to come home to ourselves? To cut through the chaos and confusion? To get closer to ourselves, and not further away?
We are landing in our power, however much it doesn't feel like it some days. We are landing in our quiet confidence. Our clarity. Our calm.
In the meantime, as you are figuring out just what is right for you, and as we are making our way through the thicket that is this hero's journey, let's be careful out there.
It's some very good stuff mixed in with a whole lot of nonsense.
I'll be back with more sciencey stuff next week.
Onwards.
I’m just telling you
This is a section where I tell you about new products that sound cool while making it clear I’ve not tried them yet.
Every time I turn on social media I get an ad for solid shampoo bars, so it makes perfect sense that someone has had a brainwave that this concept could also work for lube. Enter Pleasure Pods, a below-the-deck body butter. Created by the founders of a Peterborough, Ontario-based company (Go Canada!), these pods are made from 100 percent plant-based butters (mango, cocoa and kokum, chosen for various properties including moisturizing, wound healing, inflammation-reducing) and a touch of olive, organ and rosemary oil. Compatible with silicone toys (they are working on condoms), the pods melt at body temperature and stay put for the duration of sexy time. Because they don’t contain water, they don’t need any preservatives and won’t impact the body’s pH or osmolality balance – a new word I just learned that means no yeast or UTI issues. The pods are small and come in recyclable packaging. I’m having the founder Deborah Porteous, who founded the company with her partner Brian, on my podcast soon and boy does she have a story to tell. (It involves having her first orgasm at the age of 53, and you better believe I’m going to chase that story down!)
Things you can help with
My friends over at Morphus (who we are going to be hearing more about in the weeks ahead) are doing some very impressive research (like clocking more than 100 menopause symptoms, for example). Now they have turned their attention to menopause in workplace – and you can help. They have created two surveys, one if you are employed and one if you are not, at least not officially. (Because we all know how much unpaid labour being a woman involves, right?).
When you see a group of people join forces like this the heart sings. Tireless UK menopause campaigner Diane Danzebrink, journalist Fiona Clark and ob-gyn Dr Vikram Talaulikar, an associate specialist at the reproductive medicine unit in University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, associate professor at University College London (and future guest on the Hotflash inc podcast) have launched the Menopause Research & Education Fund. Their mission is to fund research into menopause, education for health professional to make sure women have access to accurate and evidence-based information about menopause and health. It’s also, judging from the language used on the GoFundMe page, an attempt to counter the prevailing “all HRT all the time” narrative that has swept the UK, and point out the basic information that we don’t have:
“It's hard to believe that in 2023 we still don't know the safety profile of hormone replacement therapy after 5 years of use? We don't know if testosterone given to women can improve their memory or raise their energy levels? We don't know if HRT will protect against dementia. And we don't have great data on alternative treatments for a host of menopause symptoms.”
Click, read, listen, watch + follow
• The title of this week’s Hotflash inc podcast is The most helpful perimenopause podcast ever. I meant it. If I understand this about double the amount after speaking to Dr Kirstey Holland (a Melbourne, Australia-based doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine who holds a double degree in acupuncture and herbal medicine and is a practitioner of environmental and nutritional medicine, functional medicine and naturopathy). Just listen.
• Peter Attia is a Canadian longevity-focused MD who in recent years has became an estrogen enthusiast; listen as principle Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) investigator, world-renowned endocrinologist, epidemiologist, and exhaustively published and credentialed Dr JoAnn Manson deftly counters his efforts to focus on as-yet-unfounded disease prevention aspects with hard data. This episode is a must-listen to calm down the current narrative that estrogen is the key for all things; when in fact it can be key for some things (ie symptoms). Spoiler alert: whatever mistakes were made in the WHI, it produced some very compelling data. It is literally some of the most important long-term data we have and to hear people speak ignorantly as though the entire thing should be tossed in the trash – instead of a part of it that was poorly designed – is sickening. This is the antidote. My favorite part was Dr Manson explaining why we can’t really trust all those observational studies the HRT maximalists like to throw up on social media green screens. The Drive podcast via Spotify
• I loved this take on the menopause transition in the context of the word crone, which I am leaning into but I know also makes people cranky. Romancing the Crone Oldster Magazine Via Substack
• I see a lot of coverage of how people having autoimmune disorders might not be aware that they are also in menopause; I see much less about how people in menopause might not be aware they have an autoimmune disorders. I’ve been recovering from a leaky brain (stemming from leaky gut), and it’s like brain fog with a wind machine. Not in a good way. Is Your Brain Leaking? Psychobiotic
• I would have liked to have heard from important menopause voice and Perry podcast host Rachel Hughes in this piece, rather than just watching a shot of her taking HRT, in this almost six-minute hormone therapy ad NBC report: A new look at the benefits of hormone replacement for menopause. Is it because she would have given a nuanced explanation? Inconvenient when you are crafting a narrative, I know.Today Show
• Hyper-certainty is killing us. We need to listen to people we disagree with to learn. This piece by Angel Eduardo of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is essential. Know your enemies Persuasion via Substack
Editor’s note
I just did 3 different ADHD tests and they all said “severe”. That is all.
🙋♀️🙋♀️Hi - it sounds like you are referring to us regarding the "this week I saw someone pit a bowl of black beans against a steak in some sort of bizarre protein-off". We'd love to hear why you think it's "bizarre" especially when it was most definitely NOT an "eat this, not that" type of post. And if you're not referring to us, we still would love to know why you feel the way you do. There is zero context with that statement. For those who are unaware of the bean/steak post, it was an important exploration into the concept of the amino acid leucine - which is critical for building muscle - which (building muscle) is doubly critical in perimenopause and menopause to help us avoid sarcopenia and modulate our immune system (which goes awry with aging). In no way did we say eat ONLY steak, in fact, the post started with the words "this doesn't have to be one or the other, you can have both" - we simply used these two foods to illustrate the amount of leucine needed for muscle synthesis. We both really used to LOVE this newsletter when there was a tone of inquiry. Unfortunately, the tone these days seems to be more snark and smug, which is unfortunate.
Sometimes what we think we write and what we actually write are not the same thing. I see what you are saying here, but that’s not how your post came across, at least not to me. I didn’t mean any harm, and I’m sorry if what I wrote was hurtful. What you wrote was hurtful too.