MenopauseTalk

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

When the Cycle Does Not End, It Compounds.

Menopause does not arrive as a clean break from menstruation. It arrives carrying the full history of every cycle you have ever had.

Heavy periods, painful cramps, fibroids, anaemia, hormonal imbalance, medical dismissal, these do not disappear at menopause. They shape how the brain, uterus, immune system and nervous system respond to the transition. For many women, especially Black women, menopause is not relief. It is the point where years of unmanaged gynaecological stress finally surface.

The Hidden Language of Menstruation and the Silence Around Black Women’s Pain

In every doctor’s office, there is a quiet vocabulary that determines how women’s pain is recorded, treated or dismissed.

Words like dysmenorrhea, menorrhagia and amenorrhea are not just medical jargon, they are signals, codes that unlock care or close the door to it. Yet who gets to use these words and who gets heard when they do, tells a bigger story about health inequity than most of us realise.

Understanding the Terminology

Behind each clinical term lies a lived reality, an experience that reaches far beyond a line in a medical textbook. These words describe the rhythms and disruptions that can shape a woman’s physical, emotional and professional life.