For Women
Women's Health
What testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone actually do in the female body — the research gaps nobody talks about, and dosing built around female physiology.
What testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone actually do in the female body — the research gaps nobody talks about, and dosing built around female physiology.
What testosterone does in the female body, the research gap nobody talks about, and dosing approaches built around female physiology.
Menopause hormone therapy: what the evidence supports treating, why the route of estrogen changes clot risk, and what the WHI actually found.
Why systemic estrogen is prescribed with a progestogen, which progestogens the evidence distinguishes between, and why the route of administration decides whether endometrial protection happens at all.
Thirty-six randomised trials and 8,480 women produced clear effects on desire, arousal, orgasm and sexual distress — and no established benefit for anything else. The global consensus statement supports exactly one indication, and specifies the route.
3 min readOn 10 November 2025 the FDA began removing the boxed warnings on menopausal hormone therapy for cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and probable dementia. One boxed warning stays: endometrial cancer, on systemic estrogen-alone products. That exception is the clinically important half of the story.
4 min readGenitourinary syndrome of menopause affects somewhere between a quarter and four-fifths of postmenopausal women, is progressive, and does not resolve on its own. Low-dose vaginal estrogen treats it — and because it acts locally, the position-statement guidance is that a progestogen is not indicated alongside it.
4 min readIn 80,377 postmenopausal women followed for eight years, estrogen combined with progesterone carried a relative risk of 1.00 for breast cancer. Estrogen combined with other progestagens carried 1.69. The estrogen was the same; the progestogen was not.
4 min readA woman with a uterus taking systemic estrogen needs a progestogen to protect the endometrium. A systematic review of micronized progesterone found oral dosing protects, vaginal dosing may protect — and transdermal progesterone does not.
3 min readHormone therapy is the most effective treatment there is for hot flushes, night sweats and genitourinary symptoms, and it prevents bone loss. That list is shorter than the internet suggests, and the benefit-risk balance turns almost entirely on two things: your age, and how long ago menopause happened.
4 min read