(CNN) Women are not a monolith, their experiences of menopause are not all negative, and this stage of life should not be medicalized, argue an international group of experts. A now-common treatment offered to relieve these symptoms is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which uses medication to replace the hormones lost during menopause and, in turn, ease these symptoms. The four experts further argue that while "women with severe hot flushes and night sweats often benefit from menopausal hormone therapy, most women consider menopause a natural process and prefer not to take medication." Hickey told CNN: "Medicalization of menopause makes women fearful and reduces their ability to cope with it as a normal event in life." Between 1960 and 1975, hormone therapy saw a massive boom after some reproductive endocrinologists redefined menopause as an "estrogen-deficiency disease".

Source: CNN June 18, 2022 02:52 UTC