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OB-GYN Mary Claire Haver, M.D. has been a vocal advocate for women in perimenopause and menopause over the last few years. Her ‘Pause Life wellness and education program has a huge following and she regularly speaks out about the importance of having a knowledgeable care provider during this time in your life.
Dr. Haver latest book is The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts and in it, she talks about the importance of hormone therapy for menopausal women, as well as the tools women need to be as healthy as possible during this time. Her new book, like her first book, The Galveston Diet, is already a bestseller.
Flow Space sat down with Dr. Haver to talk about what women need to know as they navigate and advocate for their health in midlife. Here are the three most surprising things Dr. Haver says she learned about menopause care while writing and researching her new book.
Women live longer than men — but we spend 20 percent of life in worse health than them.
Haver says she discovered during her research that women are “much more likely” to end up in long-term care facilities and to develop frailty and dementia than men. “That’s what puts them in the nursing homes,” she says. “That scared the hell out of me.”
Women need to shift their focus when it comes to fitness.
There has been an emphasis for years in our society of women being petite. But Haver says that “we need to be strong and not small.”
“My generation was focused on being thin and would sacrifice anything to get to a number on the scale,” she says. “And that is a mistake. We have sacrificed our bone health and our muscle strength in order to try to be a certain size when that bone and muscle is what is going to protect us and keep us healthier and protect us against frailty as we age.”
We need comprehensive women’s care.
Dr. Haver says she paid a lot of attention to what women shared on social media while writing her book. “I didn’t automatically dismiss things that I didn’t automatically know before,” she says. “So everything I know about the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause, especially frozen shoulder, everything I know about tinnitus or chronic dizziness or vertigo, brain fog…Everything I know was really driven by 10,000 comments on social media and me getting curious instead of dismissing.”
She says the medical community still doesn’t know enough about menopause and isn’t teaching women enough. “We have a very long way to go to get the entire medical institution up to speed, especially as we age,” she says. “I want to see comprehensive women’s healthcare. I don’t want to see us treated as little men.”