Forty-six-year-old Claudia Winter thought she had early dementia. “I just lose words. I lose phrases,” says the commercial real estate lender who’s always prided herself on her rich vocabulary. “I used to brag about my SAT verbal score, and I read a lot. So, struggling with word recall is just mind-boggling. It’s scary.”
A few months ago, a friend of Winter’s mentioned how brain fog is a symptom of perimenopause. A lightbulb went off. “I had no concept that some of the things I had been feeling were probably connected to menopause because no one ever talks about it,” she says.
Since, Winter has had a blood draw with Lifeforce. She’s met with a one-on-one clinician to discuss her symptoms, which include restless, interrupted sleep, a low libido, and anxiety, often brought on because she’d be worrying about having brain fog.
“Even just talking about perimenopause and hormones is a huge relief,” says Winter, who’s now part of a small percentage of women on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to improve her quality of life. According to a 2023 study published in the BMC Women’s Health journal, one billion women will go through menopause in 2025. Yet, in another study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, researchers found that only 1.8% of the study population was taking advantage of HRT.
While many may not have access to doctors and medicines, even women who regularly see a physician and are getting regular blood work done aren’t necessarily having conversations about perimenopause. Part of the issue is that, decades ago, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) released findings to a flawed study that linked estrogen therapy and estrogen plus progestin to a higher risk of breast cancer. Our mothers, aunts, and their friends who were on hormones abruptly stopped taking them. In the years since, the majority of women going through perimenopause and menopause were not prescribed anything to help the wide range of symptoms that cause many to suffer.
But in May of 2024, Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Dr. JoAnn Manson, former president of the North American Menopause Society, led a review of the WHI, both putting the old findings into context (most of the subjects in the old study were over 60 years old) and reviewing the most current science. Dr. Manson told NPR: "Among women below the age of 60, we found hormone therapy has low risk of adverse events and [is] safe for treating bothersome hot flashes, night sweats and other menopausal symptoms.”
We Have Options
“I'm 47,” says Urmila Rajagopaal Taylor, who teaches at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “For the last two years I have been feeling off in various ways. I was not getting a lot of receptiveness from my doctors because everything always looked normal on my labs and my weight is normal. It was just kind of like, ‘Deal with it.’”
Rajagopaal Taylor explains how she hasn’t been sleeping and has gained weight only in her belly while the rest of her body remains lean. She also says she’s been extremely irritable. “Especially during the PMS part of my cycle,” she says. “It’s reminded me a lot of when I was a teenager and first got my period.”
She explains how her mother went through menopause in her 50s and had dramatic belly weight gain despite being “a slender, fit person.” Her mom also suffered from severe hot flashes. “I remember thinking, ‘I never want this to happen to me,’” she says.
Today’s women have options. The stigma — and fear — over taking hormones to improve the quality of daily life is lessening, but HRT is still not commonly talked about or prescribed. However, an increasing number of women are taking control of their bodies. They’re asking questions. They’re getting help.
Nicole Preher, a 43-year-old commercial flight attendant who manages a fleet of private jets, explains how she’s a first-generation child to Middle Eastern immigrants. “As a woman, I was never really given autonomy over my body. My job was to get married and have kids.” Preher likens gaining control of what’s happening to her body during perimenopause to when she first discovered running at 21 years old. “I thought, ‘This is the most empowering thing in the world!’ she says.
“Entering menopause, your bullshit filter is gone,” adds Preher. “Your level of tolerance to deal with idiocracy is gone. You realize, ‘I am so powerful, I don’t have to deal with this anymore.’ I look at it like a superpower. I’m embracing it, and I love it.”
Preher has her master’s degree in medical microbiology and worked as a clinical scientist before switching careers to manage a fleet of private jets. She’s done her research on HRT.
She suffers from an autoimmune disorder common to Middle Easterners called Familial Mediterranean Fever that comes with joint inflammation and fevers. “So when I first started with these symptoms, I was like, wow, my disorder is getting worse,” she says. “I was in so much pain every day. It was affecting my mood. I thought I had to live with it, the inflammation, and not being able to open my hands or not clench my jaw.”
At first, she says, she’d have three bad days a month. Then it was 10. Then 15. “For a while, it was like, ‘Am I dying? Do I have cancer?’” she says. “But someone said to me, ‘Well, it sounds like you're starting the change of life early. Maybe that's what all these symptoms are. Maybe that's why your autoimmune condition is so bad.’” It turns out, Preher’s bloodwork showed hormone levels that were at post-menopausal levels. “I started hormones, and within 30 days, my sed rates were low, my CBC was normal, my rheumatoid factor was normal. I felt like myself.” (Sed rates refer to a person’s erythrocite sedimentation rate (ESR), a blood test that can show inflammation in the body, according to the Mayo Clinic.)
Fighting for Quality of Life
Having personalized care for the wide array of perimenopause and menopausal symptoms shouldn’t have to be hard. “We make having bloodwork done and having access to individually prescribed HRT easy for women, because it should be easy,” says Lifeforce Medical Director Dr. Vinita Tandon. Dr. Tandon is a board-certified endocrinologist and one of the world’s leading hormone researchers. “People are becoming less tolerant of the conventional aging process,” says Tandon. “They still want to maximize their potential. It’s pretty amazing to see the role that hormone optimization can play in that.”
Aside from improving quality of life, HRT has been shown to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease for women who start taking hormones within 10 years of menopause and who are younger than 60 years old.
Robbie Darby, a 42-year-old wellness expert and fashion designer, explains how her mother didn’t go through menopause until she was 60 and she feels she may later in life as well. “I’m just curious to know what my baseline is so that when the changes start to happen, I am more aware. I’d like to be ahead of it,” she says.
“I have thought I’ve had something going on, though, because I've gained so much weight in the last couple years. I have had my doctor look into it, and she's like, ‘It's nothing that we should be worried about.’” Darby is undergoing testing and consultation with Lifeforce to get a second opinion and to “see if there is something that they might have missed.”
Darby’s mother suffered symptoms she thought was menopause — fatigue, low appetite, hot flashes — which turned out to be metastatic breast cancer. “It was a confusing time that did feel like we could have had more information,” says Darby.
Darby is looking forward to taking control of her own situation by being armed with knowledge. “I've been so healthy, mind, body and spirit,” she says. “I'm so in awe of how wellness can transform your life. So working with Lifeforce is just an extension of that because I’m moving into another age group, another decade. It's like, I just want to consistently honor my health, and so I'm really excited.”
Rajagopaal Taylor, who also recently started one-on-one consultations with a Lifeforce physician, says that she’s happy to feel more in control of her health and her hormones. “It’s nice to not just give up on that part of your life, which I feel like women in the generations before us sort of had to do,” she says.
And Winter, who adds that, on top of losing the brain fog, she’d love to not have to worry about weight gain and a decreasing libido, admits that, until recently, she didn’t think anything about menopause related to her. “I was like, ‘Oh, that's something that's years away. I'm not anywhere close to it.’”
“But the second I got on the call from the Lifeforce doctor,” says Winter, “I was immediately put at ease. It’s such a relief to have someone who is helping me through this who's looking at all the metrics and the data and telling me, ‘There's a reason why you feel this way, and you don't have to suffer.’”
To learn more about HRT, head HERE. In honor of Menopause Awareness Month, you’ll get $250 on the Lifeforce Diagnostic when you become a member, and $100 of that purchase will go toward funding menopause research.
This article was medically reviewed by Vinita Tandon, MD, ABIM Board Certified in Endocrinology and Metabolism.
