Beautiful Thinking.
It’s been reported previously that 1 in 10 physicians (in the US) treating individuals with menopause feel adequately trained to do so. When you understand that this condition is an inevitable life stage for half of the world’s population – and it’s believed that by 2030, the number of women experiencing perimenopause and menopause will increase to 1.2 billion – that more medical professionals would feel equipped to provide women with the support they so desperately need.
This is given further weight when you understand that 80% of women will experience symptoms associated with menopause which affect their sleep, their ability to work, their relationships – the joy they find in life. And yet – according to the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) – more than a third (36%) of UK women do not feel comfortable talking to professionals about menopause, with less than 1 in 10 (9%) feeling that they have enough information on the condition.
It is little wonder then that experts such as Dr Louise Newson, who has broken many a glass ceiling in this vital space over the years, have sought to provide support for women who feel underserved and unsupported.
Newson Health, launched by Dr Louise Newson, shared that “most women, 79%, had visited a GP with their symptoms and 7% attended more than 10 times before receiving adequate help or advice. Of those women who did eventually receive treatment, 44% of women had waited at least one year, and 12% had waited more than 5 years.”
When Dr Newson began experiencing hot flushes and the start of her own experience with this condition, she decided to take her menopause journey and transform it into a specialism of her own, having been an NHS GP for years. This led to the creation of Newson Health, including eight private clinics dedicated to menopause, and more than 70 clinicians. It’s reported that in 2018 alone, Newson Health supported over 40,000 patients.
This was, of course, prior to COVID-19 when the world closed down and countless individuals experiencing health issues of all kinds were cut off from support they needed. The NHS has never fully recovered from the pandemic, and GPs continue to struggle to offer the same level of service once provided to their patients.
When you add this to the historical imbalance that women (and specifically female issues) face in getting support, women of the world have been crying out for the level of dedicated support Dr Newson and her team provided. When this is combined with the platform she gave to the condition, bolstered by the support of celebrities such as Davina McCall and Mariella Frostrup, Dr Newson was arguably the first (unofficial) face of the menopause, and many so many women feel heard and helped. She has given countless women confidence to be more open about the issues they face during this pivotal stage in a woman’s life. Newson Health is the largest menopause clinic in the UK and is reported to be one of the largest in the world. Their free resource app, ‘Balance’ has been downloaded a million times.
Where we are now seeing controversy arise is because of HRT, and specifically, Dr Louise Newson (and her team’s) practise in prescribing it to patients at much higher levels than recommended by major health bodies.
It has been reported by several women that they have experienced difficult and harmful reactions to the dosage of HRT they have been prescribed by Newson Health. One woman shared that she was warned of being at risk of cancer due to her womb lining having thickened so much.
Whilst she did not confirm that specialists informed her this was a direct result of the levels of HRT she had been prescribed, the thickening of the womb lining is linked to too high a dose of oestrogen – which is the hormone administered as part of HRT – and which can increase the risk of endometrial cancer. Progesterone is regularly prescribed alongside oestrogen to support prevention of this risk.
It was also confirmed that due to concerns surrounding ‘aspects of her practice’ not conforming with official recommendations by bodies such as the British Menopause Society (BMS), she had been removed from their online register of specialists. The organisation “accused her of dangerously overprescribing hormone replacement therapy”.
There is zero doubt that the women who have experienced harmful reactions to the very high doses of oestrogen prescribed to them by Newson Health must be listened to, and any patients of Newson Health or any other healthcare body exercises caution in undergoing treatment that can have potentially harmful side effects. However the demonisation of Dr Newson which has occurred since the Panorama documentary released has left me – and I’m sure many other women – feeling very despondent.
Where the focus should be is on the ongoing lack of support that is given to major health conditions and issues that are specific to women, particularly the menopause. GPs remain a lottery on how helpful or informative they will be, and this does nothing to limit the level of misinformation spread. Evidence has shown a number of women being prescribed antidepressants during menopause rather than being prescribed HRT. Some women are told to simply eat healthily and get more exercise.
The fear surrounding HRT has been stoked because of the lack of research conducted on it – something which I’m sure many women would agree, would not be the case if it was a treatment for a male-specific health issue.
With so many women turning to private clinics rather than the NHS and their local GPs, the spotlight should be on the severe lack of care allocated to this issue which affects so many. This investigation into Newson Health by Panorama feels like a step backwards, and I hope that the spotlight that has been shone on Dr Newson is used instead to invest in greater research on ways to better support women at this stage of their life.
