Challenging Menopause Myths
For decades, menopause was described as a deficiency disease, one that inevitably led to fractures, heart attacks and cognitive decline. Millions of healthy women were told by their doctors to take “replacement” therapy to prevent disease, even though no large, long-term studies had proven these benefits. The Network campaigned on this issue for many years, always pointing out that the risks of hormones weren’t fully understood, and the benefits hadn’t been proven. Thanks to the Network’s efforts, the NIH finally did the study no drug company wanted to do and found that the risks of long-term use for prevention outweighed the benefits. In 2002, women heard the news, stopped taking hormones they didn’t need, and hundreds of thousands avoided strokes, blood clots and breast cancer that would have been caused by those drugs. The Network received the Grassroots Activism Award from the National Breast Cancer Coalition in recognition of its work.
But the myths of menopause are back, almost worse than ever. Influencers, including social media-savvy doctors, are telling women that menopause hormones can reverse the changes of aging. Many media sources say that menopause hormones are safe and effective for long-term prevention if they are started before age 60. None of these claims has been proven to be true. And the FDA isn’t trying to squelch false claims because their new Commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, is part of the problem. He actually said, “HRT has saved marriages, rescued women from depression, prevented children from going without a mother.” I’m not writing about menopause HT these days, but I wrote a lot while I was at the Network. I’ve attached some documents that are still relevant today.