Halle Berry Says It’s Time to Talk About Menopause
Credit - Courtesy Respin
Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry has a new passion: menopause, a neglected area of medicine long in need of a little love. Doctors often downplay or fail to thoroughly treat the biological changes that trigger physical, emotional, and social shifts at midlife, and Berry is asking hard questions about why the medical community doesn't adequately address this important stage with patients.
Berry talked to TIME about her advocacy work and Respin, the new company she created to provide women with reliable and comprehensive information about menopause.
You’ve become a vocal advocate for more research and information about women in midlife. How did your personal experience bring you to this work?
The more I started to talk about what I was going through, I started to realize how other women were suffering and how little other women had. I started to see the need to continue efforts in Washington to get a bill passed with substantive dollars [for more research on midlife and more clinical trials for menopause]. I saw the need for more education.
I had no answers, no one to turn to. I was floored to find the dearth of nothingness in this space—and how little doctors knew. I thought I had the best doctors I could have.
How are you working to change how we talk about menopause?
We are working on the federal level to get the bill through, and working at the state level, too, with governors and leaders. We’re talking to them about what programs they might be willing to support in their states to support women.
Why are more doctors not talking to women about menopause and midlife?
It’s not really their fault. It’s not something that’s made important for them in medical school. But what I hold against doctors today is that now that we are out there talking about it—and screaming that women deserve better—they don’t go back to take it upon themselves to get an education. Every practitioner should know about the menopausal body. Women are living to their 80s, and menopause can start in your 40s. We spend half our lifetimes in it now.
Read More: Why It’s Time to Uncouple Obstetrics and Gynecology
If men went through this time of life in the same horrific way we do [with symptoms of hot flashes, night sweats, and mood changes], there would be lots of answers, research, and a lot of money raised to fund studies to help men live their best lives. But because we are women, we suffer sexism and ageism; when we get to this time of life, we’re expected to white-knuckle it and bow out gracefully. Because society told us our primary and best years are for childbearing, and all we are meant to do is make babies. When we are done making babies, we’re left to fend for ourselves. No one cares about us any more.
You have testified in Congress on behalf of a bill that would increase research and clinical trials to better understand women’s midlife. Why is there so little funding for this work?
We refuse to understand that menopause is a thing. It's a very important time in a woman’s life when she needs to be cared for and understand what is happening to her body so she can live her best life in the next 30 years. We haven’t acknowledged that, and that’s why we never support it with money.
How can women change the current stigma and lack of knowledge about menopause?
There are so many ideas and information and misinformation swirling around. That’s why I created Respin. It’s a community for women to talk to each other and learn from each other. But there is also a health component with health coaching, nutritionists, and experts to talk about exercise and learning how the lack of estrogen and changing hormones affect our heart, brain, bones, and entire body. I felt like there was something really missing in the market for women in midlife.
How will Respin help women in menopause?
Women can get whatever level of support and care they need. A woman in her 30s can get educated about menopause; a woman in perimenopause can get a health coach and devise a plan for her needs, whether that includes hormone replacement therapy or supplements, and a woman post-menopause can come for the services she needs, too. It all depends on where a woman is and what her needs are when she enters the community.
Read More: Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream
How can the medical system change to be more supportive and knowledgeable?
That’s my next crusade. After I get the bill passed in D.C. for more research and clinical trials, I’m going to the universities and putting pressure on them, too. We need to help them understand why this is important and reimagine their curriculum to make menopause and midlife for women more than one chapter in medical-school textbooks.
And this isn’t just for gynecologists. This isn’t bikini medicine. Every doctor—every cardiologist, every neurologist, every general practitioner, every rheumatologist—should understand the effect that a woman’s loss of her hormones does to her body and every single one of her organs.
We women have to start demanding more. That’s who I am today: a woman demanding more. I am demanding more because we deserve more.
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