Commentator Niki Bezzant Writes on Menopause

An edited extract from New Zealander Niki Bezzant’s book This Changes Everything: The Honest Guide to Menopause and Perimenopause, was recently published in The Guardian.

“For centuries the symptoms of menopause were documented, but women went through it with little intervention. It wasn’t until the advent of science as we know it that physicians (all male at the time obviously) started more commonly ‘treating’ its symptoms. It’s clear now they had no idea what they were dealing with,” Bezzant writes.

“Suffice it to say, the history of misogyny in medicine goes way, way back; all founded in the idea of women as inferior, and of menstrual blood as evil and poisonous. Fast-forward to the early 20th century, when it was discovered that oestrogen, in the form of conjugated equine oestrogen – yes, from horses – could be used as a hormone treatment for the symptoms of menopause. In 1942 the first oestrogen product was marketed under the name Premarin.

“Even now, there’s limited education on menopause for trainee and practising doctors, unless they seek it out or are particularly interested. This is really sad, because it can lead to women suffering unnecessarily. As [Prof Robert D Langer] noted in [a] 2017 paper, ‘the “facts” that most women and clinicians consider in making the decision to use, or not use, HRT, are frequently wrong or incorrectly applied.’”

Original article by Niki Bezzant, The Guardian, January 18, 2022.