Mary Claire Haver

For decades, when you look at why menopause hormone therapy was developed, it was to treat a hot flash.

And forever, the pathognomonic, the poster child symptom was hot flashes or what we call medicine vasomotor symptoms.

What was never taught to me ever, and I learned like three years ago, was we have estrogen receptors in every single organ system ever.

in this body.

And what I also was taught is in perimenopause, it's a slow, gentle decline.

That's all I learned, one sentence.

To decline until full menopause when you lose function.

It is a rocking rollercoaster and your worst symptoms tend to be the ones like the mental challenges, the brain fog, the cognitive disorders, the frozen shoulder.

All of it is peri and late peri and early menopause.

We were born with all of our eggs.

So one to two million at birth.

One to two million eggs.

But isn't this a weird, it's like that thing where you're born with all your eggs and what's the thing?

And then like, so really your grandma's eggs are your eggs?

Yeah.

So like when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that made you was inside of your mother, inside of your grandmother.

Yeah.

So in some ways, women have always existed.

So there's all this like knowledge, wisdom, and trauma.

Well, it's also the mitochondrial Eve.