Dr Natalie Crawford

I don't think that people, you know, the medical community has recognized estrogen's effects outside of reproduction until very recently.

I think there's been isolated pockets.

But there's no, no one owns menopause.

Like no one, you think it would be OBGYN, but there's no one in charge of women's health after reproduction ends.

Like there's no czar.

Suicide, mental health changes, rapidly declining bone density.

I mean, you can be healthy without estrogen.

Even the body wants estrogen.

All vaginas need estrogen.

For the most likely time for a woman to commit suicide is between the ages of 45 and 55.

So we know that mental health

We have an increase in mental health disorders, either preexisting, getting worse, or new onset of about 40% across the transition.

And we look at SSRI prescriptions, which are antidepressants.

They double across the menopause transition.

Now, there's a couple of reasons for that.

One is we weren't treating menopause with hormones, so SSRIs can actually help a hot flash, certain types.

So Paxil is one of the ones that has been proven to decrease hot flashes some.

It's not great, but it works a little bit.

And with all of the mental health changes, a lot of women are ending up on these antidepressant medications.

So we know that some of the new data coming out when I was researching for the new perimenopause, there's a really great window of using hormones to treat mental health disorders and seeing improvement in mood and also some in cognition by giving estrogen or estrogen plus the progestin early in perimenopause before the periods actually stop.