Dr. Louise Newson

And we can agree to disagree.

We can move on.

People can choose who they go and see.

But at the end of the day, we have to remember that the majority of women are not able to access hormones.

And a lot of women I meet on the tour are really struggling with their mental health, especially when they're not having hormones and they're being medicalized with antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers.

And, you know, I've written a lot about this in the book because there's one thing not prescribing hormones, but there's another thing prescribing inappropriate medication that's not treating the underlying cause.

Absolutely.

And we need to know that there are risks of antidepressants.

You know, there are risks of osteoporosis and bleeding and stroke and even dementia.

Whereas those risks are not there with hormone replacement therapy and actually taking hormones reduces the risk of osteoporosis and dementia.

So we shouldn't be medicalising women because of their symptoms, which that's what saddens me as well.

That's not in any guidelines, actually.

The guidelines are very clear that women should have the lowest effective dose.

And so for some women, the lowest effective dose is more than the licensed maximum dose.

And the licensed maximum dose has been not actually set on any good quality data.

And we've known for decades that some people need higher doses or different doses than others when we put a substance through the skin.

A bit like if someone was having a nicotine patch, some people have different doses because they absorb differently through the skin.

And that's the same with Estradiol as well.

And since Panorama, we've published a peer review article about some of our data in the clinic, showing about one in four women

who come to our clinic have low levels of Estadal in their body, despite being given the maximum dose.