Jackie's Take: What's on My Mind in Women's Wellness ✍️ 🤔 📰 

What If Hormone Therapy Isn’t a Last Resort—but instead, a Strategic Start?

After my recent essay on proactive hormone therapy, my inbox was flooded with responses—some women expressing relief ("You said exactly what I’ve been feeling!") and others raising thoughtful questions: What about surgical menopause? What if I don’t have symptoms? What if I don’t want to use hormones at all?

So, it’s clearly time for Part 2.

But let me be clear: this isn’t blanket advice. It’s about expanding our conversation around hormone therapy—because right now, it feels incomplete, outdated, and a bit patronizing.

Let’s get into it.

Younger Women Need Hormones, Too—And It’s More Common Than You Think

Hormone therapy isn’t just for women in their 50s with hot flashes. Many younger women need HT for critical medical reasons—and skipping it can have lifelong consequences.

🔹 Premature Ovarian Insufficiency (POI)
About 1% of women under 40 experience POI, often uncovered during fertility workups due to irregular or absent periods. It can be triggered by autoimmune conditions, genetics, or treatments like chemo or radiation.

🚨 Without HT, these women face decades of elevated risk for osteoporosis, heart disease, and cognitive decline. That’s why current guidelines recommend hormone therapy—at physiologic doses—until at least the average age of menopause (around 51).

🔹 Preventive Oophorectomy (BRCA1/2 Carriers)
BRCA-positive women are often advised to remove their ovaries between 35–45 to reduce cancer risk, leading to sudden surgical menopause. The drop in estrogen and testosterone can severely impact heart, brain, sexual, and emotional health.

🚨Hormone therapy is usually recommended post-op (unless contraindicated) and does not increase cancer risk from baseline in this setting.

🔹 Surgical Menopause for Endo & Pelvic Pain
Some young women undergo oophorectomy for severe endometriosis, fibroids, or other unresolved pelvic pain.

🚨In these cases, HT is used with caution especially when it comes to endometriosis — but remains foundational, for the same reasons as above.

Shifting from Symptom Relief to Systems Support

For years, the medical system told women to wait until symptoms were "moderate to severe" to consider hormone therapy. But what else qualifies as moderate to severe?

• 🦴 A hip fracture at age 60

• 💛 A UTI progressing to sepsis

• 🙃 Losing your libido forever

Hot flashes aren’t just inconvenient; they’re a known cardiovascular risk factor. So when proactive women choose early intervention, they're not being "extra." They're being strategic.

But Wait—Hormones Aren’t Everything

I also heard clearly from women who felt something crucial was missing from this conversation: hormone therapy isn’t the only—or always the best—answer. And they’re absolutely right. Integrative medicine, lifestyle changes, strength training, stress management, targeted supplements, and sleep optimization can achieve incredible results for many women.

Hormone therapy isn’t for everyone, and not everyone needs it.

What we do need is a healthcare model that acknowledges both:

1. 🌿 Lifestyle and integrative therapies are foundational, not optional.

2. 💊 For many women, hormone therapy isn’t an either/or—it’s a powerful and that enhances their existing health efforts.

Preventive Hormone Therapy: Why Wait for a Crisis?

Many of my readers are proactive—they're not content to "wait and see." They're evaluating their family histories and personal risk factors, asking insightful questions:

These women aren't waiting. They know:

• Estrogen is the gold standard for osteoporosis prevention.

• Vaginal estrogen is the top-line treatment for genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM)—which includes UTIs, painful sex, and vaginal dryness.

• Despite clear safety data, vaginal estrogen remains drastically under-prescribed, even though research shows that universal use among postmenopausal women could save Medicare up to $22 billion annually by preventing UTIs and their complications.

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⁉️💸 And so I must ask: If this were a men’s health issue, would we still be debating it? 😶 

The Birth Control to Hormone Therapy Paradox

We comfortably prescribe high-dose synthetic hormones in birth control to midlife women to prevent pregnancy. Yet low-dose, bioidentical hormones used proactively in that same group to prevent chronic disease is deemed controversial. Why, you ask?

Because historically, women's health discussions have centered around reproduction (a term referred to as, “bikini medicine”. Once fertility fades, women are often dismissed with a casual: "Good luck, hope it’s manageable."

We deserve better.

Too Risky? Time to Reframe.

The issue isn’t that hormone therapy is inherently dangerous.

It’s that we've historically studied the wrong populations, asked outdated questions, and used obsolete frameworks.

When we treat women as informed health consumers—not just patients to pacify—we can finally recognize hormone therapy as what it truly is: a potent, precise tool to maintain function, prevent health decline, and enhance vitality.

It's not about biohacking or chasing eternal youth. It's precise, personalized care. It's asking better, smarter questions. It's about protecting your future.

Let’s Continue the Conversation 🐎 .

👯‍♀️ Did this strike a chord? Forward this to a friend wondering if it’s time to consider hormone therapy.

💬 Have a burning hormone health question🔥? Click the “Send Me Your Thoughts” box below—I just might cover it in a future Part 3!

📬 Not subscribed yet? Join here. Staying informed is the wellness trend worth following.

The Tea: What's Trending in Women's Wellness & Culture 🍵 🛍️ 

✌️💵 DIY Vaginal Health Is Having a Moment—But Should It?

The latest wellness gold rush? Your vagina. Allure breaks down how unproven supplements and influencer-endorsed "feminine health" products are flooding the market—despite most vaginas doing just fine on their own.

Want the full scoop? We do a deeper dive on this week’s episode of the Well Kept Podcast—tune in HERE 💙🎙️💙🎙️

🦴🏁 A Bone “Belt” Gets FDA Approval

A new wearable called Osteoboost just became the first FDA-cleared, drug-free prescription device to treat osteopenia—long before osteoporosis or fractures set in. This belt delivers targeted vibration therapy to the spine and hips, and in clinical trials, it significantly slowed bone loss in postmenopausal women. It’s a big deal for the 54% of women over 50 with low bone density who’ve been told to “wait and see” until things get worse.

🧴🌴 Estée Lauder and Auberge Launch The Ultimate Anti-Aging Wellness Escape

Estée Lauder just went full wellness guru with the launch of its first Skin Longevity Institute—at none other than Costa Rica’s luxe Hacienda AltaGracia. Think Blue Zone energy meets biotech skincare: diagnostic facials, soul-resetting rituals, and enough Re-Nutriv to make your wellness fantasies come true.

🥞💉 A Simpler Way to Spot Alzheimer’s

More testing news➕. The FDA just approved the first blood test to detect Alzheimer’s-related brain plaques—offering a less invasive, more accessible alternative to spinal taps and pricey brain scans. Called Lumipulse, it could change how doctors spot early cognitive decline and fast-track patients to neurology care. It's not perfect, but it's a major step toward earlier, easier diagnosis for the nearly 7 million Americans affected.

Wellness Wordplay: Talk the Talk 🔈️ 

Term of the Week: FaceAge

🗣️ Could your next selfie predict your health future? Researchers developed FaceAge, an AI tool that estimates your biological age from just one photo—and found that those with cancer had FaceAges about five years older than their chronological age, and higher FaceAges were linked to poorer survival. It's a striking breakthrough in personalized medicine, raising fascinating questions about the power of AI to see what the naked eye can't.

The Group Chat Edit 📲 👯‍♂️ 

🎙️ To Listen: How to Age Up 🔼 

Dr. Karen Adams, director of Stanford’s Menopause & Healthy Aging program, isn’t here to sell you toxic positivity—but she is here to challenge the idea that aging is something to dread. In this podcast episode, she makes a bold case for why 66 might actually feel better than 35 (yes, really), especially for women who are finally done performing, pleasing, and second-guessing themselves. It’s the kind of midlife mindset shift that deserves to be passed around the group chat.

🥞 To Try: How Much Sugar is Hiding in Your Breakfast? 🍬 

📖 Many popular breakfast foods secretly pack high levels of sugar, putting midlife women at greater risk of weight gain, heart disease, and diabetes. Think you're making smart morning choices? Test your breakfast IQ with this quick quiz—and see if your favorites make the sweet-but-sneaky list.

💵 To Buy: Vitamins You Can…Wear? 💊

A woman stopped me this week in the hair salon to rave about this product, so naturally I HAD to share 🤗. Iron deficiency flies under the radar for a lot of us—especially if you’re still getting your period—and it can quietly drain your energy, mood, and even cause hair loss. If oral supplements wreck your gut, Barrière’s vitamin patches offer a smarter workaround: micronized iron, B12, hyaluronic acid and biotin delivered through your skin. Bonus? These chic little patches look like temporary tattoos—proof that stick-on flair isn’t just for your tweens 👧