In her new book Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause, actor Naomi Watts recounts feeling alone, a sentiment both common and counterintuitive. Roughly 3,500 women enter menopause—the life stage defined as not having had a menstrual period for at least 12 months, as if that were all—every day.
Thanks to stubborn social stigma, all too many women approach midlife largely unaware of the tsunami of effects pushing toward them, which read like fine print on a prescription drug ad: day and night sweats, palpitations, migraines, urinary urgency, anxiety attacks, painful intercourse, insomnia, brain fog, tinnitus, thinning hair, fatigue, dizziness, and brittle nails.
According to AARP, only about 20 percent of internal medicine doctors and OB-GYNs are adequately trained to counsel on menopause. “Many times, we’re brushed off. … It’s become commonplace to dismiss women’s health and our concerns,” observes Rani Ramaswamy, Community Health Network OB-GYN. Help is out there, but you may need to do a little legwork to find it. Possible starting points include The Menopause Society’s practitioner database, Anderson Longevity Clinic, New Moon Center for Women’s Health, or Southside OB/GYN of Indianapolis. When you call, ask these questions, advises Christy Watson, M.D. at Body Bar MD in Carmel:
• Have you had additional training in the treatment of menopause?
• Do you stay abreast of new guidelines for genital, urinary, and musculoskeletal syndromes of menopause, as well as the importance of testosterone in women?
• Are you comfortable with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy? How recently have you been trained on it?
“Don’t just ask these questions of gynecologists,” adds Watson, “but also primary care physicians and urologists with training in sexual health.”
