Beyond the Hormone Headlines:
Reclaiming the Truth About Oestrogen, Progesterone and Menopause for All Women.
Menopause is not a sudden event. It is the culmination of a hormonal story that begins in childhood and unfolds across decades. Yet for too many women, particularly Black women and women of colour, that story has been fragmented, oversimplified or silenced altogether.
If your relationship with menopause has felt confusing, medicalised or even traumatic, you are not imagining it. Much of what we are told about hormones is incomplete and much of what is missing reflects who has historically been excluded from research, diagnosis and care.
What the Data Tells Us
By the age of 45, over 80% of women report menopausal symptoms that affect daily life, work, sleep, cognition and emotional wellbeing. Studies suggest 10–20% of women are sensitive to micronised body-identical progesterone, experiencing side effects such as low mood, anxiety, fatigue or brain fog. Yet hormone research has largely been based on White, Western populations, leaving critical gaps in how menopause is understood and treated in Black women and women of colour.
Emerging evidence shows Black women often enter perimenopause earlier, experience more severe symptoms and are less likely to receive adequate support or hormone education. This is not biology alone. It is structural invisibility.
When Hormones Meet Inequality:
Pregnancy, Fibroids and the Cost of Being Unheard
From childhood to menopause, hormones are in constant dialogue with the brain, immune system, metabolism and emotions, but they are also in dialogue with timing, access, bias and belief. This is where biology meets lived reality.
As more women delay pregnancy for reasons that are social, economic, relational and structural, the hormonal landscape of fertility has changed. In the UK, the average age of first-time mothers is now close to 30 and higher in major cities. For many women, fertility planning is no longer confined to a “healthy reproductive window” but overlaps with late reproductive years and early perimenopause.
This is not a failure of women’s choices. It is a reflection of modern life. But it does mean that pregnancy increasingly occurs alongside hormone-sensitive conditions that have often gone undetected for years.
Heavy Periods Are Not a Minor Symptom, They Are a Signal
Heavy menstrual bleeding is one of the most common reasons women seek help and one of the most commonly minimised. Many women are told their periods are “normal,” that pain is “part of being a woman,” or that symptoms will settle after childbirth.
For some, they do not.
Heavy periods can be an early indicator of fibroids, adenomyosis, endometriosis, thyroid dysfunction or clotting disorders. Over time, untreated heavy bleeding contributes to iron deficiency, fatigue, cognitive strain, low mood and reduced immune resilience, all of which matter profoundly when women are trying to conceive or sustain pregnancy later in life.
Yet heavy bleeding is still too often treated as a lifestyle inconvenience rather than a clinical red flag.
Fibroids:
Common, Unequal and Under-Discussed
Fibroids are benign growths, but their impact is anything but benign.
By midlife, the majority of women will have had at least one fibroid and Black women are disproportionately affected. Research consistently shows that Black women:
Develop fibroids at a younger age
Have larger and more numerous fibroids
Experience more severe symptoms
Face longer delays in diagnosis and treatment
For women delaying pregnancy, this matters. Fibroids can interfere with implantation, increase miscarriage risk, contribute to anaemia and raise the likelihood of pregnancy complications such as pre-term birth. Many women only discover fibroids when fertility investigations finally begin, often years after symptoms first appeared.
This is not because the symptoms were absent. It is because they were not taken seriously.
Pregnancy Later in Life:
A Hormonal and Structural Reality
When pregnancy occurs later, it is more likely to sit alongside:
Declining progesterone support
Fluctuating oestrogen levels
Underlying inflammatory or metabolic stress
Previously undiagnosed uterine conditions
This does not mean later pregnancy is unsafe. It does mean it is more complex and complexity requires informed, personalised, culturally competent care, not assumptions or shortcuts.
For women navigating pregnancy while also experiencing peri menopausal hormone shifts, the emotional and physical load can be significant. Anxiety, sleep disruption, brain fog and fatigue are often attributed solely to pregnancy, when in fact they may reflect layered hormonal change.
Misdiagnosis, Delay and the Trust Gap
One of the most damaging aspects of this journey is not the symptoms themselves, but the years of being unheard.
Across the UK, women report long delays in diagnosis for hormone-related conditions. Pain is minimised. Bleeding is normalised. Fertility concerns are deferred. Mental health labels are applied where endocrine explanations were never explored.
For Black women and women of colour, this delay is compounded by racial bias in pain perception, communication barriers and cultural silence around reproductive health. Many enter fertility planning or perimenopause without ever having had a clear explanation of their hormonal health.
This erodes trust, not only in medicine, but in one’s own body.
Reclaiming the Narrative:
Black Perspectives on Menopause and Hormonal Health
This is why Black-led advocacy and education matter.
Organisations such as Black Women in Menopause and educators like Nina Kuypers are not simply raising awareness, they are correcting an imbalance that has had real consequences for fertility, pregnancy outcomes and menopause care.
From a Black perspective, hormonal health cannot be separated from chronic stress, racism, intergenerational trauma and the expectation to endure quietly. Menopause, fibroids and fertility challenges do not exist in isolation. They sit within lived lives shaped by resilience and neglect in equal measure.
What This Means for Women Today
Understanding hormonal fluctuations across the life course allows women to:
Recognise heavy bleeding as information, not inconvenience
Understand why pregnancy later in life may feel different, not defective
Question dismissal and seek second opinions
Approach menopause with literacy rather than fear
Menopause is not the beginning of decline and fertility challenges are not personal failures. They are signals within a system that has not always served women equally.
What This Really Means for Women Living in Their Bodies
When hormones are discussed in isolation, women’s experiences are often framed as separate problems. Heavy periods here, fertility challenges there, a difficult menopause later on. But for many women, particularly those delaying pregnancy, these experiences are not separate at all. They are connected chapters of the same physiological story.
Heavy bleeding in early adulthood is often the first signal that something in the womb environment is changing. Fibroids may develop silently for years, especially in Black women, while symptoms are normalised or dismissed.
Fertility planning then happens later, sometimes alongside early perimenopause, when hormonal fluctuations are already intensifying. By the time answers are sought, the body has often been compensating for a long time.
This is where inequality quietly enters the picture, not as a headline issue, but as lived reality.
Women who are listened to early receive explanations.Women who are not learn to tolerate symptoms.
Over time, tolerance is misread as normality and delayed care becomes embedded as “just how women’s bodies are.”
For Black women and women of colour, earlier onset of fibroids, heavier bleeding and longer delays in diagnosis mean that pregnancy, fertility and menopause are more likely to arrive with complexity, not because their bodies are flawed, but because care arrived late.
Understanding this is not about fear.
It is about clarity.This sheds light on why pregnancy later in life can feel more demanding than anticipated.
It clarifies why menopause can feel like the moment when years of unanswered signals converge.
It also captures why so many women say, “If this had been explained earlier, my relationship with my body would have been different.”
What This Group Is Really For
This space exists because many women have spent years doubting themselves, wondering whether their pain was exaggerated, whether their exhaustion was weakness, whether their fertility struggles were personal failures.
They were not.
Hormones respond to time, stress, inflammation and how long signals go unanswered. When we understand that, the shame lifts and better questions become possible.
An Invitation, Not a Demand
If parts of this post mirror your own journey, heavy periods dismissed, fibroids discovered late, fertility or menopause explained too narrowly, you are not alone.
If you feel able, share this with a woman who has been quietly managing symptoms without answers.
If this helped you connect experiences that were never explained together, add a comment, even a short one.
If you want more conversations like this, rooted in evidence and real lives rather than silence or simplification, stay engaged here.
If this post offered language for experiences you have struggled to explain, keep that information with you. It is valid and it matters.
Nothing about this is about blame it is about understanding the body in context and giving women back trust in what they have been feeling all along.
