Hot flashes and hormone therapy: the science of perimenopause

After decades of controversy over prescribing hormone therapy for perimenopause, many providers are reconsidering their approach.

Perimenopause affects more than 4 billion people, but has historically been neglected by medicine. It’s the time before menopause when hormones start fluctuating wildly, leaving women with brain fog, hot flashes, dropping bone density, and mood changes. Thanks in part to social media, it’s more prominent in public discourse than it used to be.

But it’s not just awareness that’s blown up: It’s also the promise that you don’t have to suffer like those before you, thanks to hormone therapy. After decades of controversy over prescribing estradiol and progesterone due to concerns of increased breast cancer and heart disease risk, new research has many providers reconsidering their approach.

Joining Flora to sort out the science are reproductive endocrinologists Nanette Santoro and Genevieve Neal-Perry, who are both running some of the biggest long-term studies on perimenopause and the effects of hormone therapy. 

Guests:

Dr. Nanette Santoro is a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz and is the president of the Endocrine Society.

Dr. Genevieve Neal-Perry is a reproductive endocrinologist and the OB-GYN department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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