I’ve been on my own journey for more than a decade, while not even realizing it until this last, most powerful year yet.

It’s going to be interesting, looking back years from now when there is some sort of body of research on how cannabis works to improve our peri/menopause experience.

In the summer of 2022 we were treated to new guidance from the North American Menopause Society for the use of menopause hormone therapy, aka MHT, aka HT (aka the treatment formerly known as but still often called HRT).

The menopause transition is getting more and more press these days, but too often that coverage casually – and, it can be argued, irresponsibly – talks about antidepressants as a routine treatment option for mood issues.

I interviewed the famous makeup artist and businesswoman Bobbi Brown the year she was turning 50 (I was 37). When I asked her how she felt about it, and expecting dread, or something negative, there was a long pause.

Frozen shoulder, also known as adhesive capsulitis, is a condition caused by a stiffening of the adhesive cap that covers the shoulder joint, causing pain, stiffness and immobility in one or both shoulders. It is a painful and movement-limiting condition, with three stages – freezing, frozen and thawing – that all told can add up to a two year arc.

Wendy Kohrt knows a thing or two about our estrogen: she’s been studying its impact on metabolism for 30 years.  When she started out the common belief was that estrogen therapy was so effective that every menopausal woman should be on it – to the point that she had to justify the ethics of randomizing women to a placebo during her clinical trials. 

I started leaning into my hot flashes. I stopped dreading them. Which means I stopped denying them. I started approaching each one with curiosity and detachment, as a neutral experience that I will soon get through, and that has made everything better.

The average woman, according to a report from the Female Founders Fund, spends US$2,000 a year on trying to manage symptoms. Here are a few evidence, expert and experience-based suggestions on how to tackle how you feel without forking over any more cash.

When the natural and mainstream medicine worlds battle it out, supplements tend to be caught in the crossfire. There are several truths worth considering here: hormone therapy is not for everyone and hormone therapy might not help everything.

I’d call my 40s a roller-coaster, similar to the kind of ride many women report experiencing in perimenopause. I would easily and often stew and ruminate about people, or their actions. Anxiety was near-constant; I was always fighting a lurking sense of dread – a feeling that hit hardest in the morning. I ran myself ragged trying to cope: exercising like a crazy person to feel better and on the weekends, drinking too much just to relax.