You Might Also Like: Health vs Hype with the American Medical Association

CeCe Moreno (0:07)

Sometimes we condition ourselves to think that menopause is just bad. It's just going to be bad. Things just get worse as you age. Deal with it. Suck it up and don't complain. But I think we need to retire that advice, and we need to advocate for women feeling like their best selves.

Trace Dominguez (0:26)

Menopause is having a moment, and hormone replacement therapy is being talked about everywhere from social media feeds, social media, the internet has normalized the conversation in a way that I think is incredible and really powerful.

Pilar Guzman (0:41)

Obviously, lots of misinformation and that can be dangerous.

Trace Dominguez (0:45)

To doctor's offices.

Elizabeth Lapeyre (0:46)

Unfortunately, a lot of people get their information more from social media than they do from science. That makes it very challenging in my office.

Trace Dominguez (0:55)

If you had a trapper keeper in middle school or hung out at the mall as a teenager or wore jelly shoes or a banana clip, you might want to pay special attention to today's episode. Because we're talking frozen shoulders, hot flashes, brain fog, estrogen, progesterone and more. And of course, what all that has to do with perimenopause, menopause and the hot topic of the day, hormone replacement therapy, also known as HRT.

We invited a few people to help us make sense of it all. Like Pilar Guzman, editorial director of Oprah Daily, who helped shape Oprah's new book on menopause. She'll share what she learned while working on the book.

Pilar Guzman (1:33)

This was a major topic that we wanted to tackle, both Oprah and I, when I first got here. Twenty years ago, when she was doing the Oprah Winfrey Show and going through menopause herself, she could not get any celebrity to go on the show to talk about their own menopause experience. So we've come a long way, which is really wonderful.

Trace Dominguez (1:51)

We also invited CeCe Moreno, creator of Silver Sister Says, which is a platform where she shares her life experiences with the intent of helping women to know their worth.

CeCe Moreno (2:01)

When I share stories online about my life, one of the questions that comes up over and over again is, how are you able to be this confident through menopause? Like, girl, tell me about menopause.

That's all they want to know. They're like, wait, how are you navigating menopause? Tell me about it.

Trace Dominguez (2:21)

And most importantly, we asked Dr. Elizabeth Lapeyre to join us. She's a board-certified OB-GYN and medical director for the Menopause and Women's Wellness Center at Oxnard Health in New Orleans. She's also menopause certified by the Menopause Society.

Elizabeth Lapeyre (2:36)

While I appreciate that menopause is having a moment and we're talking about it, I think it's important for patients to find the right person.

This whole midlife, it's starting the rest of your life. So what you're doing now is really going to matter. And so it's really important to get it right and to not cause harm.

Trace Dominguez (2:55)

Welcome back to Health vs. Hype with the American Medical Association. I'm your host, Trace Dominguez. Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT, has gone from a once controversial treatment to one of the biggest conversations in women's health. So what does the science actually say about using hormones during menopause? Join me as we find out whether HRT is all health or just hype.

To give us kind of a launch pad for this conversation, Pilar, I want to start with you. Since you spent so much time engaged with this topic while you were working on the Book of Menopause, I'd love for you to tell us what you think is missing from the public conversation right now about menopause and hormone replacement therapy.

Pilar Guzman (3:48)

Yeah. You know, I think as much as I love that we have now turned a lot of attention to menopause in midlife women's health, you know, it's never quite enough.

Of course, it's a very disruptive time, but actually, I think this misconception that menopause, it's this moment when you stop your period at this stage of life, it's about 15 years in the making. The attention to perimenopause is actually very heartening because I think women, to the point of the, don't wait till your oil runs out completely before you replenish it, we need to start thinking about these things earlier.

And the idea that you go through menopause and it's over. Actually, it's never over. The hormones are only moving in one direction. And I think, while wonderful, the discussion around menopause is really just a Pandora's box that's been opened up to really have greater understanding around women's health at large. The hope is that when we start thinking about this more holistically and on a continuum over a longer period of time, then we can get ahead of some of the issues that plague women.