Browsing by Subject "Menopause"

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    Femme Feral: a novel
    (2024) Beckbessinger, Samantha; Coovadia, Imraan; Beukes, Lauren
    A hyper-competent tech CEO thinks she's going through perimenopause, but there's a different reason for the sudden hairiness and seething rage threatening to destroy everything she's worked for: she's become a werewolf. --- The novel Femme Feral explores what happens when rage is repressed for too long and finally bursts out as wild violence. The story centres on Ellie, a hyper-competent leader in a tech company. Like most 46-yearold women, she is already juggling too much: a job that doesn't appreciate her, the care of her ageing father-in-law, a depressed daughter, and the million other large and small tasks modern middle-class life seems to require. When she finds herself beset by strange physical changes (hair sprouting in new places, trouble sleeping, losing time, finding bloodstains in her clothing, and persistent boiling anger), she attributes everything to perimenopause. She tries solution after solution offered by the booming menopause care industry, but nothing helps. Nearby, a short-tempered older woman named Belinda discovers that her cat has been killed, mutilated, and left on her neighbour's front steps. She swears to find the person responsible. Belinda begins an obsessive investigation across her rapidly gentrifying London neighbourhood and discovers something impossible: a werewolf stalking the city on nights of the full moon. Ellie. Once she realises what's happening to her, Ellie is thrilled by her new lycanthropic powers. She discovers that some problems can be solved with violence. She removes a business rival to take his job as CEO. She savages her daughter's stalker. She scares away catcallers. As she becomes more unapologetic, she gets more of what she wants. Only … Ellie soon realises that the beast within isn't easy to control. With Belinda on her trail and a growing fear of what she's becoming, Ellie has to find a way to yoke her fury before she tears through the people she loves. Femme Feral is a Jekyll-and-Hyde horror story about middle age rage
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    Prevention of diseases after menopause
    (2014) Lobo, R A; Davis, S R; de Villiers, T J; Gompel, A; Henderson, V W; Hodis, H N; Lumsden, M A; Mack, W J; Shapiro, S; Baber, R J
    AbstractWomen may expect to spend more than a third of their lives after menopause. Beginning in the sixth decade, many chronic diseases will begin to emerge, which will affect both the quality and quantity of a woman's life. Thus, the onset of menopause heralds an opportunity for prevention strategies to improve the quality of life and enhance longevity. Obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, cognitive decline, dementia and depression, and cancer are the major diseases of concern. Prevention strategies at menopause have to begin with screening and careful assessment for risk factors, which should also include molecular and genetic diagnostics, as these become available. Identification of certain risks will then allow directed therapy. Evidence-based prevention for the diseases noted above include lifestyle management, cessation of smoking, curtailing excessive alcohol consumption, a healthy diet and moderate exercise, as well as mentally stimula...
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    Risks and benefits of hormone therapy: has medical dogma now been overturned?
    (2014) Shapiro, S; de Villiers, T J; Pines, A; Sturdee, D W; Baber, R J; Panay, N; Stevenson, J C; Mueck, A O; Burger, H G
    BACKGROUND In an integrated overview of the benefits and risks of menopausal hormone therapy (HT), the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) investigators have claimed that their 'findings … do not support use of this therapy for chronic disease prevention'. In an accompanying editorial, it was claimed that 'the WHI overturned medical dogma regarding menopausal [HT]'. OBJECTIVES To evaluate those claims. METHODS Epidemiological criteria of causation were applied to the evidence. RESULTS A 'global index' purporting to summarize the overall benefit versus the risk of HT was not valid, and it was biased. For coronary heart disease, an increased risk in users of estrogen plus progestogen (E + P), previously reported by the WHI, was not confirmed. The WHI study did not establish that E+ P increases the risk of breast cancer; the findings suggest that unopposed estrogen therapy (ET) does not increase the risk, and may even reduce it. The findings for stroke and pulmonary embolism were compatible with an increased risk, and among E+ P users there were credible reductions in the risk of colorectal and endometrial cancer. For E+ P and ET users, there were credible reductions in the risk of hip fracture. Under 'worst case' and 'best case' assumptions, the changes in the incidence of the outcomes attributable to HT were minor. CONCLUSIONS Over-interpretation and misrepresentation of the WHI findings have damaged the health and well-being of menopausal women by convincing them and their health professionals that the risks of HT outweigh the benefits.