Clarifying WTF we are talking about here

Your weekend roundup of hopefully helpful things

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

It struck me this week that in 2024, we are having a bunch of different conversations about hormone therapy all at once, and it’s very confusing. Here’s my totally subjective proposal for clarifying things, at last a bit:

Hormone therapy in early and surgical menopause

Women go through early menopause – before 40 – for a variety of reasons, including premature ovarian insufficiency, hysterectomy (complete or partial), cancer treatment and a range of medical conditions. The data is stacked pretty high on this one. Our outcomes are not good if we go through early menopause and don’t ‘replace’ our hormones. It appears we can lose our hormones slowly, at the designated time. But we can’t lose them early, or all at once. We need hormone therapy. 

What to call it: hormone replacement therapy (HRT) 

Hormone therapy in perimenopause

A decade ago, no one was talking about perimenopause, which is – as we now know – all the years before menopause. In the earliest stag…