The "Lost HRT Generation" Was Sitting Next to Me at Lunch

I’m in NYC at a conference today, and when I told the woman sitting next to me at lunch about Rescripted, she immediately launched into her own health story. I love this, by the way. I happen to be one of those people who, the second I say I run a women’s health company, gets everyone’s health trauma laid on me. What can I say? When you share your story, it gives others comfort to do the same.

Anyway, she’s 64, finally just went on HRT, and told me she was part of the “lost HRT generation” — the women who went through menopause after the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study, which was so badly misread that doctors were nervous to prescribe hormones and women were scared to ask for them for over two decades. She struggled with hot flashes for more than ten years before being offered the solution she could have used all along.

The timing is wild, because just last week, ACOG updated its menopause guidelines for the first time since 2014, giving hormone therapy a strong recommendation for hot flashes, night sweats, and the sleep problems that come with them. The guidelines also say it’s best to start before 60, or within ten years of menopause, which is basically the whole time this woman was dealing with it on her own.

I’m 37, and between PCOS and IVF, my hormones have been through a lot already. But I’ll probably hit perimenopause with doctors who aren’t scared to help me, and she had to wait until 64 to find one.

Honestly, I think she told me because for ten years, nobody asked.