Leadership Perspective

For decades, research on any type of women’s health problems was limited to pregnancy and childbirth. To put it into context, women were not even required to be included in medical research in the United States until the 1990’s. That’s horrific. There is no question that the growing awareness of menopause and perimenopause has been a positive development. For too long, women's health concerns were dismissed, minimised, or ignored altogether. Many women spent years struggling

Low libido? Brain fog? No energy? Feeling flat? Testosterone is increasingly being talked about as the hormone midlife women may be “missing”. But does the evidence match the hype? Spend any time in menopause groups online and testosterone is hard to miss. Women talk about getting their energy back, thinking more clearly, feeling stronger, being more motivated and, perhaps most often, rediscovering a sex drive that seemed to have packed its bags and left somewhere in midl

Menopause advice is everywhere. How do you know what to believe? A decade ago, women struggled to find reliable information about menopause. Now we are being told to eat more protein, lift heavy, take creatine, optimise our hormones and buy an ever-growing list of products designed for midlife. More information should be a good thing. So why does it feel harder than ever to know who to trust? As recently as a decade ago, HRT still seemed to exist in a strange, shadowy

You’re thinking about HRT, now more commonly called menopausal hormone therapy or MHT, but should you go on it at all? If you do, should it be a patch, gel or tablet? How do you know what dose is right, whether you need blood tests, and what the breast cancer risk really looks like? Menopause specialist Dr Anna Fenton explains what HRT can actually help with, where the evidence sits and what women should be asking before and after they start treatment. When I first intervie

Last month, I had a routine mammogram. Even when it’s routine, there’s always that little kernel of worry. You go in, get your boobs squashed between two plates in a way that feels both deeply undignified and medically necessary, then get dressed and carry on. And wait. A week later, the text arrived. All clear. Nothing to see here. Get on with your life. Phew. On to worrying about everything else, then. But life said, hold my gin. The very next day, I was in the shower, wash

Sarah Starkey knew something wasn't right. What she didn't know was that she had extremely dense breasts, or that breast density could make cancer harder to detect on a mammogram. Now she wants other women to have information she never had. Sarah Starkey had a palpable lump. Breast pain. Nipple changes. A family history of breast cancer. Then her mammogram came back clear. Three months later, the 48-year-old mother was diagnosed with stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer. By