Dr. Louise Newson

And it contradicts the evidence that we have.

Because women who take hormones, their symptoms improve.

But more importantly for me as a clinician, their future health improves as well.

They have a lower incidence of diseases.

And we have to realize this more and more because we're living longer as women.

But sadly, most women are unhealthy in their last 10 years of life.

And on a myriad of medications for diseases...

such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, dementia, that can all be reduced if people take hormones.

Well, yeah, I think a lot of it is, sadly, women have been dismissed for years.

We've been labelled as hysterical women and people don't believe the symptoms.

But the other thing that I realised more and more is that people are very confused what hormone treatments are.

And people often are scared about hormone treatments because the older types of hormone treatments in older types of HRT, but also in contraception hormones,

They're actually synthetic.

They're chemicals.

They are associated with small risks.

Whereas the hormones now we prescribe are the same structure as our own hormones, progesterone, estradiol and testosterone.

So they're not with risks.

They're safe and effective.

And so there's a misunderstanding by a lot of healthcare professionals, actually, the difference.

I mean, even the name, you know, it's got testes, like women don't have testes.