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Writer's pictureadvancingherhealth
May 232 min read

Menopause Out Loud

Halle Berry and many other names we are familiar with are serving as spokespersons to get the word out about a woman's experience during menopause and with that of our clinicians. She said, "The inevitable midlife event that all women go through must be destigmatized. She tells us here that after an instance of painful intercourse, she visited her doctor and described it as "I feel like I have razor blades in my vagina. I ran to my gynecologist and said, 'Oh my God, what's happening?' It was terrible," she recalled. "He said, 'You have the worst case of herpes I've ever seen.' I'm like, 'Herpes? I don't have Herpes!'" And she was right. Halle's body, like many other women, responds to symptoms of perimenopause differently, including vaginal dryness, which can irritate, burning, and pain with intercourse. 


It is clear that women are using their voices, and the media are capturing stories and helping to bring us stories about the stages, symptoms, and treatments of menopause. IAWH has a series of short discussions about menopause through conversations with Dr. Arianna Sholes Douglas, who joined us in 2023 to discuss this topic. We've curated and clipped five vignettes that are easy to digest and share:  


Also new about menopause, marijuana to improve menopause symptoms? I first read an article at Katie Couric Media. I started my search and found that according to a 2023 survey conducted by Dahlgren et al. (2022), women may be turning to cannabis to relieve the taxing symptoms of menopause. The analysis included 258 individuals; 131 were perimenopausal, and 127 were postmenopausal. Here's more on this and the KCM story here.

 

Janine E. Payne, MPH

Co-Executive Director


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