{"id":462231,"date":"2026-05-22T19:23:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462231\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T19:23:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:23:15","slug":"rethinking-the-power-of-hormones-women-deserve-the-information-needed-to-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462231\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the power of hormones: ‘Women deserve the information needed to choose’"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re a woman aged 40 or older, chances are you\u2019ve heard of Dr Louise Newson. The British-based GP has long been an outspoken advocate for women\u2019s health<\/a>, particularly menopause care, focusing on the topic long before it became mainstream.<\/p>\n

Having spent 18 years working as a GP and medical writer, she opened the first of several private menopause clinics in 2018, launched a podcast in 2019 and then Balance, a free menopause app in 2020, and in 2021 was a leading voice on landmark documentary Davina McCall: Sex, Myths, and the Menopause, which transformed the national conversation around menopause in Britain. Around the same time, a similar discourse around menopause<\/a> kicked off in Ireland when Sallyanne Brady, co-founder of The Irish Menopause support group, emailed Liveline about her traumatic experience of menopause.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t all been plain sailing. In 2023, the British Menopause Society (BMS) removed Dr Newson from its online menopause specialist register, stating the move was \u201cas a result of concerns that aspects of her practice did not accord with established guidance\u201d.<\/p>\n

A Panorama documentary followed in 2024, raising concerns that Newson\u2019s clinics were prescribing too-high doses of HRT. However, earlier this year, the British health regulator\u2019s report rated Newson\u2019s clinics as \u201coutstanding\u201d and found the service was \u201ccommitted to supporting women with care that met their needs\u201d.<\/p>\n

With regard to the BMS, Newson now says: \u201cThey are a charity. They\u2019re not a regulatory body, and they\u2019ve behaved like a regulatory body… It\u2019s increased confusion about who I am and also what hormones are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her latest book, The Power of Hormones, is a guide to all things endocrine. In it, she outlines how hormones affect far more than fertility and periods, influencing almost every system in the body, including mood, brain function, heart health, bones, sleep, and energy levels.<\/p>\n

Early on, she dispels the myth that oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are sex hormones and are gender-specific. All three are needed by men and women, she writes, and their receptors are not confined to the reproductive organs but are distributed throughout the body, meaning these three hormones influence many aspects of health.<\/p>\n

While many women find they can access oestrogen and progesterone quite easily, often if they need a dose change or testosterone, she says they can \u201cbecome stuck\u201d if their practitioner doesn\u2019t have the knowledge to help them.<\/p>\n

Getting the balance of HRT right during perimenopause can be challenging due to the significant hormonal fluctuations during this stage. \u201cAnd that\u2019s where it\u2019s really important that women don\u2019t just give up,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Testosterone is a case in point. The triangle of hormones that is oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone \u201cwork closely together\u201d, she says, and from her clinical experience \u201cit\u2019s a balance of those three hormones that\u2019s key\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"DrDr Louise Newson says getting a balance of all of your major hormones is important<\/p>\n

She can prescribe a patient oestrogen and progesterone \u201cbut if someone\u2019s symptoms are due to testosterone deficiency, then they\u2019re not going to improve\u201d.<\/p>\n

Every cell, organ, and system needs testosterone to function properly, Newson writes.<\/p>\n

Testosterone treatment for women is a polarising topic. Endocrinologist professor Susan Davis, a world leader in testosterone research, has conducted large clinical trials around testosterone in post-menopausal women and found no benefits on mood, wellbeing, or depressive symptoms. There is, however, extensive anecdotal evidence that it helps with these symptoms, which is often attributed to the placebo effect. Newson thinks \u201cit\u2019s very degrading to women to say that it\u2019s all in our heads and it\u2019s placebo\u201d.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t always need a randomised controlled study in medicine, she argues, explaining that testosterone is a biologically active hormone that\u2019s long been known to help with wellbeing, mood, muscle strength, and bone repair. \u201cWe\u2019ve got lots of data from men\u2019s studies about how beneficial testosterone is for future health. And a lot of the drugs that we prescribe, like statins, blood pressure drugs, use data from men. But somehow, when we\u2019re trying to extrapolate that data about testosterone in men and equate it to [its therapeutic use in] women, everyone\u2019s going, \u2018No, you can\u2019t do that\u2019,\u201d she says, pointing out that \u201cit\u2019s the same hormone,they\u2019re the same cells\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her own clinics have collated extensive data from \u201cnearly 2,000\u201d patients showing \u201cthe incidence of side effects is vanishingly low\u201d. What she does see, \u201ctime and time again\u201d are the benefits for women. Testosterone helps rebuild cells, improves the connections between the neurons, rebuilds the myelin sheath.<\/p>\n

Freedom of choice<\/p>\n

Newson does not believe in giving everyone hormones. Her goal is \u201cgiving information so people can choose\u201d and is \u201cadamant that women should be allowed to choose\u201d to try hormones if they wish to \u201cbecause they\u2019re being silenced all the time\u201d.<\/p>\n

She also favours a holistic approach but points out that if hormones are deficient, all the lifestyle changes in the world won\u2019t fix the issue: \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t say to someone with an underactive thyroid gland, \u2018Don\u2019t bother taking thyroxine, just try and lose some weight and exercise more, and don\u2019t worry that you\u2019re feeling so tired.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Newson has been on HRT for about 11 years. She says: \u201cIf I weren\u2019t taking it, I would not be working. My brain completely went [during perimenopause] and I was finding it very difficult to do yoga because I was getting a lot of joint pain and stiffness. Also, I couldn\u2019t remember anything. I found it difficult to function at work. And I probably wouldn\u2019t be happily married either because I was finding my relationship with my husband quite difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also takes DHEA, known as prasterone, as a preventative for UTIs. \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of urinary tract infections, which is quite ironic because I\u2019m married to a urologist. I thought he\u2019d be able to sort me out but clearly not,\u201d she says, adding that two of her daughters also use DHEA for their recurrent UTIs.<\/p>\n

She explains that DHEA \u201cis a lot more effective than vaginal oestrogen\u201d because the tissues of the vagina, vulva, urethra, and bladder contain \u201cas many testosterone receptors as oestrogen receptors\u201d. As DHEA converts in the body into both oestrogen and testosterone, it can act on both sets of receptors rather than just one. \u201cAbout a third of sepsis is due to UTIs,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She found that patients who had bladder pain syndrome or interstitial cystitis and were \u201creally disabled with their pain and their discomfort\u201d had a significant improvement in symptoms \u201cwithin months\u201d when prescribed vaginal DHEA. Her experience is that it also frequently \u201cmelts away\u201d lichen sclerosis, a chronic, incurable, inflammatory condition of the skin in the vulval area, which, if left untreated, has a small but significant risk of cancer.<\/p>\n

UTIs are often also a side effect of the contraceptive pill. While HRT contains bio-identical hormones, the contraceptive pill is, almost without exception, made from synthetic hormones. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re going to be worrying about any treatments that are called hormone treatments, we should be worrying about the synthetic hormonal treatments that are given out to so many women,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the book, she writes about research that links oral contraceptives to an increased risk of suicide, alopecia, and autoimmune conditions, and side effects such as low libido, cystitis, and UTIs, and an altered pain response. She is not saying that no one should take oral contraceptives but \u201cas doctors, we have responsibility for thinking about the potential risks and alternatives for those people who want alternatives\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Power of Hormones by Dr Louise Newson
\n \u2018The Power of Hormones\u2019 by Dr Louise Newson is published by Hodder & Stoughton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you’re a woman aged 40 or older, chances are you\u2019ve heard of Dr Louise Newson. The British-based…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33970,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-462231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health-body","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}