There are oestrogen receptors in every part of your body and if fluctuating hormones are sending erratic electrical signals to your heart and internal thermostat, what messages might they send to your mind? Not long after my mother died after a long haul with Alzheimer’s disease, and I’d juggled going up to Glasgow to help care for her, a full-time job as the Times film critic in London, and raising three children, I suddenly needed to escape all responsibility. I got divorced and I changed career. I just couldn’t cope, waking up at 3am sweating and anxious. It wasn’t just the menopause but midlife unravelling, too, or as psychotherapist Susie Orbach puts it: “The menopause arrives, seeking out our vulnerabilities like a guided missile, just as we need all our strength to cope with daily life.” Find out more about how to combat vaginal dryness with vaginal estrogen, available on prescription from your GP: Winner of The British Book Awards 2023 Overall Book of the Year ‘We can’t wait for this.’ Red Menopausing is more than just a book, it’s a movement. An uprising. Find out more about how perimenopause and menopause affect your brain, memory and mood, and how HRT can help:

The compounded oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone worked brilliantly at first – within four days my hot flushes and palpitations disappeared forever, my memory returned and – unexpectedly – my mood lifted and my joints became supple. Oestrogen was the oil I needed in my engine, but a year later, I got a bad batch of the compounded hormone lozenges, which turned out to be from an unregulated pharmacy, and ended up having bleeding and then cervical and uterine biopsies. Overall Winner and Winner of Non-Fiction Lifestyle Book of the Year at The British Book Awards 2023! Inequality is coupled with medical sexism, which fails to take account of the latest science, and leaves women to keep calm and carry on. While researching my book, I discovered the grim toll of oestrogen deficiency in the second half of every woman’s life, and the latest research on HRT’s extraordinary long-term health benefits for osteoporosis, diabetes and dementia, which women are twice as likely to get as men. The start of a movement: to get everyone talking about menopause in every home, GP surgery and workspaceI believe the book should perhaps have been titled "Menopausing: How HRT Can Help". Okay, that's a terrible title but something in a similar vein to reflect its heavy focus on hormone replacement therapy being the be-and-end-all solution for some women.

Nevertheless, Menopausing does serve a crucial purpose in dispelling the isolation that women often feel when grappling with the myriad of symptoms associated with perimenopause and menopause. The book provided me with valuable information and a sense of relief about the numerous symptoms that I was unaware were associated with my perimenopause. The book not only assisted me in identifying the symptoms directly linked to my perimenopause, but it also aided me in untangling the intricate connection between hormonal changes and the impact of my past trauma on my overall well-being. For too long, women have had to keep quiet about the menopause – its onset, its symptoms, its treatments – and what it means for us. Menopausing will build an empowered, supportive community to break this terrible silence once and for all. By exploring and explaining the science, debunking damaging myths, and smashing the taboos around the perimenopause and menopause, this book will equip women to make the most informed decisions about their health… and their lives. McCall is part of a wider menopause movement that is challenging the notion of “keep calm and carry on and shut up”. She added. “Women themselves until recently somehow felt they didn’t deserve this [HRT] and they felt ashamed of it and ashamed to ask for it. They felt it was a sign of weakness. And now it’s a sign of strength.”One glaring issue I found with Menopausing is its repetitiveness. Certain points and concepts are reiterated to the point of redundancy, which I found quite tiresome in my search for new information and perspectives. Unless you’ve done medical training and you understand, it’s easy to take a superficial approach,” she said, adding that some women felt pressured to take HRT when it might be better to try lifestyle changes first.