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december

11dec7:00 pm8:00 pmNavigating Menopause: Live Q&A with Dr Louise Newson and Dr Penny Ward7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

What people say

Today is the first day of our perimenopause and me

Today is the first day of our perimenopause and menopause awareness advent calendar. It’s something @dr_ceri_cashell and I have been planning for a few weeks now to make sure as many women as possible are supported with the various symptoms of menopause. We are working with many other people globally on this advent calendar.

The first symptom we are discussing is heavy periods, which is something that is quite often one of the earliest symptoms women have at the start of their perimenopause. We have written an article on my @balancemenopause website to give you more information on this but if you are concerned, then please reach out to your healthcare professional for advice and treatment.

#DeckTheHormones #MerryPeri #HappyPause

One of my Instagram followers sent me this message

One of my Instagram followers sent me this message and I am so grateful for her sharing these kind words with me. It’s a perfect reminder why we must all continue raising awareness of perimenopause and menopause in as many ways as possible and sharing our different experiences - you never know who your content will help!

My mission is to improve the future health and lives of all women so I still have a lot of work to do…

This is the last two sentences from an article I w

This is the last two sentences from an article I wrote with @drrichardhull who is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the National University of Ireland. He has spoken about “gendered ageism” for many women when it comes to receiving evidence based menopause care and treatment.

While taking HRT is always a personal choice, it is one that should be offered early to most women. Indeed, it should be recommended more often by health care practitioners given its key role in alleviating menopausal symptoms, preventing disease and promoting quality of life.

Following my post yesterday about the government’s major conditions strategy, I have looked into how much these conditions cost the NHS/UK economy and they really are significant:

👉 Mental ill-health cost in UK more than £118 billion a year (1)
👉 CVD costs the health system an estimated £7.4 billion and the economy an estimated £15.8 billion a year (2)
👉 Osteoporosis causes 500,000 broken bones every year in the UK, costing over £4.5 billion (3)
👉 Diabetes and its complications cost over £14 billion every year to treat (4)
👉 The total cost of dementia in the UK is £34.7 billion (5)
👉 Absenteeism from migraine alone costs £9 billion per year in the UK (6)

The conditions which are costing the most to the NHS are also those that increase during menopause. It is awful that only the minority of perimenopausal and menopausal women receive HRT.

It would be very interested to see how these costs would reduce if all women who wanted to access HRT were able to. So much needs to change to improve women’s health.

1. https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2022/c-Mar-22/Mental-health-problems-cost-UK-economy-at-least-118-billion-a-year-new-research
2. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/cardiovascular-disease-england
3. https://theros.org.uk/what-we-do/media-centre/media-toolkit/
4. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/cost-of-diabetes.html
5. https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2019/K-November-2019/Dementia-care
6. https://migrainetrust.org/live-with-migraine/reducingtheimpact/managing-migraine-at-work/

I’ve heard from women who have told me their doc

I’ve heard from women who have told me their doctor has said they have to exercise more and lose weight before they can start HRT. To me, this is a backwards approach. When women are feeling better after taking HRT, they are more likely to have the motivation to exercise so then everything becomes easier and more enjoyable, as @gabbylogan explains happened to her here.

In my podcast this week, we talk more about this and how important exercise is for our mental wellbeing as well as our physical wellbeing. I will share links to listen in my Story now.

The UK government recently announced their “Majo

The UK government recently announced their “Major Conditions Strategy” - these conditions are Cancer, Chronic respiratory disease, Dementia, Cardiovascular disease, Mental ill health and Musculoskeletal disorders.

These six groups of major health conditions are all associated with increased inflammation and they all increase in incidence during the menopause when hormone levels are low. Our hormones oestrogen, testosterone and progesterone are all anti-inflammatory in our bodies and studies have shown that women who replace their low hormones with HRT have a lower future risk of these diseases. However, the minority of women in the UK are prescribed HRT (around 14%) and in areas of deprivation (where these diseases are more prevalent) it is as low as 2%.

In England, women living in the most deprived areas have a healthy life expectancy of 51.4 years compared with 71.2 years for women living in the least deprived areas – a difference of 19.7 years.

HRT prescribing is a complete postcode lottery in the UK and also in many other countries.

I often wonder to myself how much healthier women could be if they were prescribed HRT when they want it and need it?