092 - Menopause care and education in the United States and Britain - Heather Hirsch and Dr Louise Newson
The Dr Louise Newson Podcast
Dr Louise Newson
4.7 • 933 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Dr Newson has a lively discussion with Heather Hirsch, the Clinical Programme Director for the Menopause and Midlife Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Heather was shocked to see, during her fellowship, that what was being taught about menopause principles and care was actually wrong and realised that menopause was the biggest gap in women’s healthcare across America.
The experts discuss the problem of unregulated compounded bioidentical hormones and the reasons why 2-3 thirds of American women use this type of non-approved hormone treatment, rather than FDA approved body identical HRT that is prescribed by doctors in the UK. They reflect on the shift away from using HRT over the last 2 decades, and the devastating consequences to women’s health because of this, and offer practical advice on how to educate other healthcare professionals to unlearn the pervasive myth that estrogen is dangerous.
Heather’s three take away messages are:
- Medical students should spend time with a menopause doctor and see how they help women.
- Menopause care is a team effort and a global effort; everyone has to come together.
- Tell a friend, colleague or family member about evidence-based sources of menopause information such as podcasts, youtube channels, or social media. Help spread the truth about HRT.
IG @hormone.health.doc
Website: heatherhirschmd.com
YouTube: Health by Heather Hirsch
Podcast: Women's Health by Heather Hirsch
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Neuson Health Menopause podcast. I'm Dr. Louise Newson, a GP and menopause |
| 0:15.8 | specialist and I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity. In addition, I run the Newston Health |
| 0:22.5 | Menopause and Well-Being Clinic here in Stratford-upon-Avon. |
| 0:31.2 | So today, I'm delighted to introduce to someone who doesn't live in the UK, someone from |
| 0:36.3 | across the pond, and we've had a few |
| 0:38.0 | doctors actually already on the podcast series. So welcome. This is Heather Hirsch. She's a clinical |
| 0:43.7 | program director for Menopause and Midlife Clinic at the Boeing and Plus Women's Hospital. |
| 0:49.4 | And she's also staff at Harvard Medical School. So quite a mouthful really. So welcome, Heather. Thank you. |
| 0:55.7 | I'm so excited to be chatting with you today. Oh, great. So we sort of, I've had you in my radar for a while, |
| 1:01.5 | and you've probably had me in your radar for a while. So we sort of first spoke just last week, |
| 1:07.1 | actually. And as many of you who listen to me know, I'm constantly trying to think of |
| 1:11.8 | ways to reach more women, to help more women, to give women choice about their future health. So |
| 1:17.5 | in the UK, as many of you know, only the minority of women receive good quality, evidence-based |
| 1:23.3 | menopause, care and treatment. And sadly, it's the same in America. So I'd like to hear more, |
| 1:28.7 | Heather, if we can. Sure, absolutely. It is unfortunately very similar. And there's a couple of reasons |
| 1:37.9 | why I think that this could be. But what I found during my medical journey is that I completed my internal medicine residency and then I went on to do a fellowship in women's health. |
| 1:49.6 | When I went to do my fellowship, I became very interested in menopause and midlife. I was at the Cleveland Clinic, which is a big institution and people from all over the world would fly in. |
| 2:00.0 | And I was floored that what I learned just a year ago in an internal medicine residency |
| 2:05.4 | between 2010 and 2014 was actually wrong about a lot of the evidence-based principles about |
| 2:12.2 | menopause care. |
| 2:13.9 | I was floored to see that women from all over the country were flying into Cleveland to be treated, |
| 2:19.8 | to be understood, to understand hormone therapy when they were denied hormone therapy. |
... |
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