FERNWOOD FITNESS - PULSE eMagazine - Issue#16 - Flipbook - Page 14
Hormone therapy is back in the
headlines, with nuance
No topic shows the changing
landscape like menopausal
hormone therapy.
After the early 2000s Women’s Health
Initiative results were widely interpreted
as showing increased risks, hormone
therapy carried a long shadow. In late
2025, the US FDA began removing
boxed warnings from menopausal
hormone therapy products, arguing that
the warnings created unnecessary fear
and did not re昀氀ect how risk varies by
age, timing, formulation and dose.
At the same time, clinicians continue to
emphasise nuance. Hormone therapy
can be very effective for symptom
relief and it plays a role in bone health,
but it is not one-size-昀椀ts-all and it is
not automatically a “longevity drug”
for everyone. The more responsible
direction is the one women’s longevity
keeps returning to: informed,
individualised decisions guided by a
clinician who can weigh bene昀椀ts and
risks in context.
The next frontier: slowing ovarian
ageing itself
The most intriguing part of this trend
is not just better menopause care. It
is the possibility of interventions that
preserve ovarian function for longer,
potentially shifting downstream risks
for multiple conditions.
This research is early, but the
experiments are compelling: studies
exploring whether low-dose rapamycin
could slow ovarian ageing, modelling
work on ovarian tissue cryopreservation
and later transplantation to delay
menopause, and research into ovarian
昀椀brosis suggesting it may be more
reversible than previously thought.
There is also growing attention on the
environment ovaries operate within:
in昀氀ammation, stress physiology,
circadian disruption, air pollution and
emerging contaminants. Microplastics
have even been reported in human
ovarian follicular 昀氀uid, raising new
questions about exposure and
reproductive health.
