This is because it should be simple to diagnose a woman of this age with menopause if she has had no bleed for 12 months and offer HRT. However, symptoms and issues associated with peri menopause are commonly happening many years before periods become irregular or stop altogether, and as women are getting to 45, we are commonly in the most unstable part of our menopause, where we have too much of some hormones and not enough of others. By not testing what is happening with a woman’s hormones, doctors are blindly offering her a full dose of HRT which she may not need or be able to tolerate, which often makes her feel much, much worse. This guideline in our view is stopping millions of women from getting the support they need and deserve.

This test will be a single observation of the hormones FSH and oestrogen but NOT progesterone or testosterone. As we discuss in many blogs and videos, progesterone is one of the most important hormone to test in the early stages of perimenopause. This guideline leaves women feeling lost and helpless when commonly their test results come back as ‘normal’ when they feel anything but.

This testing does not test for progesterone so many women can go for years and years without a diagnosis.

This is a major oversight as progesterone is hugely implicated in a woman’s mood, (and her ability to sleep) and most functional doctors do offer body identical progesterone to women who have had a hysterectomy.

We refute the concept that synthetic progestin is essential for women when natural progesterone is available and is stated to have fewer side effects.

Breast cancer is a contraindication to the use of HRT

This is due to the lack of research available but, in our view bearing in mind how many women cannot tolerate the standard HRT route, it seems remiss to continue to avoid doing the research.

Whilst it is acknowledged it may improve sexual desire there is no evidence. As many reports show, testosterone does a lot more than increase our libido and so again we say, go and do the research.

This highly important point is in the small print and not in the recommendations. This leads us to question why synthetic progesterone is therefore being promoted.

This again is a hugely overlooked recommendation and is in absolute contrast to the trend for offering women more and more oestrogen without any exploration as to why their HRT isn’t working for them.