It’s not often that I end up yelling at the radio (at least not since I started putting HRT patches on my buttocks), but on Tuesday I found myself in the kitchen, screaming with rage.
It was Woman’s Hour, of all things, that did it.
There I was, making a coffee, when the former president of the British Menopause Society arrived to talk about a Panorama documentary that had been shown on the BBC the night before, about the menopause industry and the huge private sector that has emerged . in the absence of consistent care for women in the NHS.
I was hoping Dr. Paula Briggs would show some compassion for desperate women who turn to privacy to manage menopause symptoms. After all, she is a representative of the country’s largest menopause charity, established in 1989 to educate and guide health professionals about post-reproductive health.
So it was disconcerting when she instead began delivering an incomprehensible monologue about pharmacokinetic studies (which look at how the body interacts with drugs over time) on HRT and the need for women to be more patient with it. NHS, especially as everything was moving “too fast”.
Not so fast, given that the average wait for a first appointment at a menopause clinic was almost double the NHS 18-week treatment target, at last count.
And surely the former president of the British Menopause Society, of all people, would understand that the reason things are moving so quickly is because they haven’t moved at all for… ooh, several centuries?
But there was more. Briggs said the huge awareness around menopause had left many women fearful of what a “stage of life” is. Which seemed (at least to my sensitive female ears) to be a polite way of saying, “Come on girls, aren’t you making a big fuss over nothing?”
It was a bit like listening to the director of PETA declare that furs weren’t so bad if you were forced to wear them in the middle of winter, or the spokesperson for an anti-smoking campaign announce that an odd cigarette every now and then wasn’t going to hurt you that much.
“Not all GPs will be interested in women’s health,” Dr Briggs said defensively as he welcomed Nuala McGovern, as if women were a small minority group and not 51 per cent of the population.
Prompting Carolyn Harris MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Menopause, to reply: “What we need is for all doctors, whether interested in women’s health or not, to have a basic understanding of what menopause is. so that women would not have to go to private clinics or would not have to resort to alternatives.’
Listen, listen!
What, I wondered, would the estimated 60,000 women who currently cannot work due to the crippling symptoms of menopause make of Dr. Briggs’ comments? That figure was revealed this week in a major report by the NHS Confederation, which said the cost of the disease to the UK economy is around £1.5bn a year.
The report states that women who experience severe menopause symptoms are twice as likely as the general population to be economically inactive. Professor Geeta Nargund, senior NHS consultant, said: “The conclusions of our report are unequivocal: women’s health problems and the disparity in gynecological care represent a pressing public health challenge… it is essential that the government prioritize funding… to improve health. results for all women.”
The Panorama documentary that sparked the Woman’s Hour debate, which showed private doctors at Newson Health clinics prescribing estrogen in a range much higher than the recommended dosage, certainly raised concerns, enough so that the BBC decided to publish a ticker throughout the debate. bottom of the screen during the episode, warning women not to stop their HRT without first speaking to a medical professional.
Dr Paula Briggs, former president of the British Menopause Society, appeared on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to talk about NHS treatment.
This signaled for many the reality of menopause: that it is not the process that women fear, as Dr. Briggs pointed out, but hormone replacement therapy, which carries an increasingly higher risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancers.
But this risk has been exaggerated, partly because the results of a 2002 trial linking HRT to breast cancer were “misleading and distorted for advertising”, leading to “misinformation and hysteria”, according to Professor Robert Langer, who worked in the study. study. “Good science became distorted and ultimately caused substantial and ongoing harm to women,” she wrote in 2016.
The documentary Panorama described HRT advocate Dr Louise Newson as predatory and exploitative. But I met Louise on several occasions, was briefly treated by her, and always found her to be motivated by a desire to help women rather than harm them.
Dr Louise Newson, menopause advocate and HRT advocate
Like many private doctors, she opened her clinic because she discovered that the NHS was not taking menopause seriously and she wanted to change that. And change it she has; Arguably, without Newson’s campaign, hundreds of thousands of women in this country would know little or nothing about menopause and the options available to them.
The fact that these private menopause clinics are not regulated in any way just shows how little the powers that be take into account women’s health.
As I have written before on these pages, HRT transformed my physical and mental health, but I was only taken seriously by another private doctor as my NHS GP told me I was too young (both my mother and grandmother had gone until menopause at the age of 43; now I’m 44).
It’s no exaggeration to say that these drugs kept me afloat during a time that involved intense suicidal ideation, and I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t had the privilege of being able to afford to go private.
This is the big scandal, really. That institutions like the BBC and the British Menopause Society are singling out people like Dr Louise Newson and all the companies selling supplements that claim to relieve hot flashes, without stopping to ask why on earth this “industry” exists in the first place. .
It’s not because anyone in charge is listening to women, that’s for sure.
Reality TV veteran Pete Wicks with his Strictly partner Jowita Przystal
Pete Wicks has revealed that he finds Strictly much more difficult than any other reality show he has taken part in.
“I’ve done Celebrity SAS twice and this is harder,” she told Loose Women this week. “It’s more intense and very far from my comfort zone.”
I’m glad you’re doing it. Having previously dismissed it as a bit Z-lister, I have to say I’m completely delighted with it.
Extremely handsome and funny. This year I’m on Team Wicks.
Bryony in her underwear for the London 10km race
Readers will already know that I have a penchant for running in my underwear in the name of body positivity.
The other weekend, I participated in a 10K race through the streets of London wearing only pants and a bra, and I decided to make an Instagram video about it, to let other women know that if I can gallop six miles in my underwear like size 20 then they can go out and move around too (but with clothes).
The video went viral (over a million views) and with it came the usual barrage of comments from people so used to seeing unfiltered and unedited women’s bodies in the wild, they have no idea how they actually move.
‘Your breasts need better support!’ wrote countless people, for whom the fact that breasts actually move when women run seemed to be a revelation.
“Your running gait is terrible and you’ll end up needing your knees replaced,” wrote one particularly analytical viewer, who clearly knows more than my highly qualified physical therapist.
As always, I remember: no one knows a woman’s body better than some strangers on the Internet.
Why politics is like fashion
Isn’t it fascinating that the various fashion weeks always take place at the same time as the various party conferences?
As I watched all the power players descend on the Chanel show in Paris and the Conservative gathering in Birmingham this week, it struck me that fashionistas and politicians have more in common than they would like; After all, they’re both cocky and navel-gazing and think the world revolves around them.
Angelina Jolie with British rapper Akala (Kingslee James McLean Daley) were seen leaving a restaurant in Milan, Italy, where she is currently filming.
It’s lovely to see that Angelina Jolie seems to have settled down with a good man; Apparently, she has been dating British poet Akala for over a year, completely under the radar.
Which just goes to show that Hollywood celebrities can exist outside of the spotlight if they really want to.
Have you ever felt like life is a little…too much? Bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon is here to ditch the shame and dive headfirst into the trickier parts of life. Look for The Life of Bryony wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes released every Monday and Friday.
