Dr. Betty Murray explains that menopause affects every cell in your body, not just causing hot flashes. Without estrogen, women's cardiovascular aging accelerates to match men's within a decade, and bone loss leads to osteoporosis. Half of women over 65 fall; half those falls fracture bones; half those women die within a year.
Let's talk about for the woman that doesn't have symptoms, like, is this still something that she should be thinking about when it comes to hormone replacement therapy or seeking some support?
Yes. So this is a situation where the lack of symptoms does not mean that there's not something really significant going on in the body. So every single cell, which means every single organ in your body, has a receptor for estrogen. So menopause is a full-body event. And what we know from research, it is clear now that the act of going through menopause accelerates the action of aging. So women are actually protected against heart disease and cardiovascular and vascular disease until menopause. And then we actually rapidly age and start to age match men within the first decade. And same thing, we have osteoporosis. Women have a very high risk for osteoporosis because estrogen is the foreman that tells the body to build bone. And so all women, if they are not on hormone replacement, are at risk for bone loss. And right now, today, if you look, you know, if a woman over 65 falls, 50% will fall, 50% of those will actually break a bone, and of the women that break bones, 50% will not be alive in the ensuing year from some sort of complication. And it's the leading accidental injury that leads to loss of mobility and freedom.
