Author Niki Bezzant's new book about menopause is called This Changes Everything. Photo: Reuben Looi
Menopause has become a marketing opportunity, but a startling range of products and services available has left women more confused and disempowered than ever before.
It used to be something we didn't talk about, like periods and anxiety.
But menopause is emerging not just as an issue that is coming out in the open, but as a vehicle for all manner of profitable products.
"It's a real marketing opportunity now," says writer and menopause expert Niki Bezzant. "There's a huge gold rush of menopause products being marketed at women. If you can slap 'menopause' on something then you can charge a premium for it and probably people are going to buy it."
Meno-washing, anyone?
Friday 18 October is world menopause day.
Menopause is a natural biological process that marks the end of a woman's menstrual cycles and reproductive years, diagnosed after a woman has gone 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period. It is often associated with various physical and hormonal changes signaling the end of the reproductive years when the ovaries stop releasing eggs and the hormones progesterone and estrogen become less abundant.
The ages, stages, signs and side effects are many and varied, but we're talking about many millions of women around the world - and the symptoms can be debilitating.
They include anxiety, depression, weight gain, body pains, brain fog, dizzy spells, incontinence, heart palpitations, phantom smells and even seeing things.
As many as 15.5 million women will experience menopause at any one time, and that's not counting those going through the peri-menopause phase first.
In 2023 the menopause industry was worth $NZ 27.11 billion globally. It's expected to be worth around $29.09b this year.
Other countries - including Australia - appear to be well ahead of New Zealand when it comes to considering the issue in the workplace. There are calls in Australia for the Federal government to consider 'reproductive leave' for those suffering from sleepless nights and hot flushes.
Bezzant says it will be great when we do not need a special day earmarked to raise awareness, but until then we need to keep talking about it.
She is surrounded by menopause content at the moment and says the information out there varies widely in its levels of quality and accuracy.
"Everyone's jumping on to menopause - which is a good thing, right? It's good that there's lots of conversation about menopause. But it can mean that there's also less than credible information, people giving advice who aren't really qualified to give advice, misinformation. There's a lot of stuff that is potentially quite confusing for women. It's not information overload… but it's concerning that we have this kind of conflicting advice out there, very much like we see in the world of nutrition and healthy eating."
The Detail looks at a recent BBC Panorama investigation which has sparked uproar in the "menoverse". The documentary looked at the products marketed at women which have little, if any, evidence behind them.
"Some of it is just exploitative," Bezzant says.
But what has got people up in arms about the documentary is that it took aim at one of the very popular menopause doctors in the UK, Dr Louise Newson, who has done a lot to raise awareness of the issue.
Some of her former patients had been prescribed HRT (Hormone Replacement Theory) in higher than recommended doses, and it looked at the complications those women had.
The reaction was intense - like this, from writer and patient of Dr Newson, Lorraine Candy who wrote in The Independent newspaper:
"Just when we thought that a generation of mid-life women who've been gaslit, patronised, fobbed off, dismissed and under-served by the medical profession were being listened to and finally treated properly, suddenly we were back in that all-too-familiar territory of fear, panic and disinformation."
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