How menopause treatment is changing and why it matters
Each year, more than 1 million women in the U.S. experience menopause.
The condition, which stems from the decline in a woman’s reproductive hormones after menstruation stops, typically occurs in women between the ages of 45 and 55, according to Time. Symptoms may include hot flashes, mood changes, difficulty sleeping and other physical discomfort.
A 2023 study found that many women and their health care professionals did not have adequate knowledge and training on menopause. However, that situation could be resolved in the near future, since more and more people are getting serious about the needs of women, according to health experts.
What is happening with menopause in the medical and business world?
Here are key menopause-related developments in recent years:
The FDA approved a drug to treat severe hot flashes caused by menopause.
Bayer is developing a similar medication to the FDA. According to Reuters, it has succeeded in late-stage trials.
The Society for Human Resource Management found that companies such as Microsoft began to offer menopause benefits to their employees.
Lawmakers are pushing for more research on menopause. For example, the Menopause Research and Equity Act of 2023 was a resolution that expressed support for the recognition of “World Menopause Awareness Month” and the Menopause Research Act of 2022.
Newer companies like Alloy and Midday connect women via telehealth to menopause specialists. The companies also sell wellness products to help.
Sharon Malone, chief medical adviser to Alloy, said in an interview with Time, “Women of a certain generation just assumed that suffering was just part of being a woman, our unfortunate lot in life. (Now, patients) are saying, ‘This is nonsense. You’re going to have to do better by us.’”
What about ‘male menopause’?
While aging, men also go through hormonal changes, particularly in testosterone levels, according to CNN. This situation is called andropause.
Testosterone plays an important role in the body, regulating libido, muscle mass and strength and the production of red blood cells, among other things, according to the National Institutes of Health. As men age, testosterone decreases, which affects those bodily functions.
The American Urological Association found that 2 in 10 men over the age of 60 and 3 in 10 men in their 70s and 80s suffer from low testosterone levels.
However, andropause should not be compared to menopause in women, according to health experts.
Richard Sharpe, an expert in male reproductive disorders and professor at the University of Edinburgh, said to The Guardian, “There is no question that, in normal men at the population level, blood testosterone levels decline with age from late 30s to early 40s onwards. However, there is no precipitous fall in (blood testosterone) levels akin to that which occurs for estrogen levels in women at the menopause.”
Ravinder Anand-Ivell, an associate professor of endocrinology and reproductive physiology at the University of Nottingham, agreed with his assessment, telling The Guardian that andropause could be due to lifestyle factors or psychological problems.
“A lot of the ‘andropause’ literature stems from commercial interests, particularly in the USA, wishing to draw spurious comparisons with the female menopause in order to sell testosterone-related products for which there is no clinical evidence of benefit,” said Anand-Ivell.
