If you’re tuned into the conversation surrounding women’s health or you’re approaching or in midlife, you can’t have helped but see the headlines on HRT and menopause care this week.
The coverage followed a Panorama programme on Monday 30th September, in which news broadcaster Kirsty Wark looked into the prescribing practices at clinic Newson Health, which is run by Dr Louise Newson, one of the world’s best-known menopause specialists.
The programme’s main concern was that Dr Newson and the clinicians at her clinic are routinely prescribing very high doses of HRT, putting their patients’ health at risk.
Dr Newson has responded by explaining that a person’s absorption of an oestrogen patch – or gel – varies hugely, and that the guidelines around the maximum recommended dose need to be updated. “The skin is a barrier,” she told The Sunday Times. “Its thickness, blood supply, the temperature, the fat under the skin — all that affects how it is absorbed. There’s a tenfold variation in absorption between different women.”
I know this from first-hand experience. I’ve been a patient at The Newson Clinic since 2020 and I’ve been prescribed 175mcg oestrogen patches – 75mcg over the recommended maximum dose.
I first went on HRT in 2020. I’d started experiencing perimenopausal symptoms. Hot flushes, anxiety, extreme exhaustion but inability to sleep too. At first I didn’t know whether I was just experiencing all of this because the world was in lockdown and I was raising twin toddlers and a 9-year-old at the time. But I gradually started putting two and two together and decided to get some advice.
I knew that I didn’t want to get fobbed off by my GP. I had heard so many scare stories about GPs not taking women seriously and doling out antidepressants instead of looking at HRT. Plus, having endometriosis, adenomyosis and polycyctic ovary syndrome, I wanted to go straight to the experts.
My experience having consultations at The Newson Clinic was nothing but reassuring and helpful. It was such a relief to be speaking to a doctor who got it and who didn’t have to do blood tests, or wasn’t interested in telling me, ‘Oh, you’re on the younger side of things’ which a GP previously had. (At 41, I was prime age to be starting to experience perimenopausal symptoms).
I felt heard and I felt seen.
The clinician I saw at The Newson Clinic was very careful about starting me off on a low dosage of HRT to begin with and using gel, because you can change the dose quite easily. Over the course of, maybe 18 months, we very gradually upped the oestrogen and there were always conversations about the progesterone and the importance of that to protect the endometrial lining to prevent cancer and side effects.
Going on HRT – and the dose I’m on now – has been totally transformative.
Knowing how much it has helped me and how low the numbers of women taking HRT still are, made Panorama disappointing to watch. For them to focus on one clinic and one doctor, when there are much bigger issues in the women’s health arena, felt like a misjudgement.
I’m surprised that during their research, the Panorama team didn’t get a response from The Newson Clinic (like the response we’ve seen this week) and immediately think: “Now THIS is the real investigation. We need to look into why the adequate research isn’t there for menopausal women.”
In my view, the biggest scandal in menopause care is the lack of training in the NHS, the lack of understanding that GPs therefore have, the lack of adequate research and the fight that women have when they going to their GP to try and get treatment.
This week a Sunday Times journalist contacted me asking if I’d speak to them about my experiences with the Newson Clinic. As I told them, I think Dr Louise Newson is somebody who has really stuck her neck out for to help women.
She is fighting for better research, for better understanding. She’s educating women. She has created the free Balance app that you can download, track symptoms and take it to your NHS GP. She is doing a lot to help menopausal women. She is someone who has got women’s backs, and she has worked so hard to try to change things for the better.
My concern now is that the Panorama programme will scare women (some of whom may already have worries about HRT due to the flawed study more than 20 years ago which incorrectly generated headlines about HRT and the high risk of breast cancer).
As Davina McCall put in, this week, this feels like a set back for women.
It’s important that we hold people to account, question why we are being told something, why the advice is what it is, but it’s also important that we then listen to the logic, the facts, the reasons. And it’s vital that we don’t get distracted by doctors, experts and charities attacking each other when they should be working together towards the common goal of helping women.
