BRYONY GORDON: The way the NHS treats female health is shockingly inadequate. That’s why women like me have to go to menopause clinics

It’s not often I end up shouting at the radio – not since I started sticking HRT patches on my buttocks, anyway – but on Tuesday I found myself in the kitchen, shrieking with rage.

It was Woman’s Hour, of all things, that did it.

There I was, making myself a coffee, when on came the former chair of the British Menopause Society to discuss a Panorama documentary that’d been shown on the BBC the previous evening, about the ­menopause industry and the huge private sector that has sprung up in the absence of any consistent care for women on the NHS.

I expected Dr Paula Briggs to display some compassion for the desperate women who go private to ­manage symptoms of the ­menopause. She is, after all, a representative of the country’s largest menopause charity, ­established in 1989 to educate and guide healthcare professionals on post-reproductive health.

So it was baffling when, instead, she began to deliver an ­incomprehensible monologue about pharmacokinetic studies (which look at how the body interacts with medication over time) on HRT and the need for women to be more patient with the NHS, especially as everything was moving ‘too quickly’.

Not that quickly, given the average wait for a first appointment at a ­menopause clinic was almost double the NHS’s 18-week target for treatment, at the last count.

And surely the ­former chair of the British Menopause Society, of all people, would understand the reason things are ­moving so fast is because they haven’t moved at all, for … ooh, several centuries?

But there was more. Briggs said the huge amount of ­awareness around ­menopause had left many women fearful of what is a ‘life stage’. Which seemed (to my ­sensitive lady ears, anyway) to be a polite way of saying, ‘Come on girls, aren’t you all making a big fuss out of nothing?’

It was a bit like hearing the head of PETA declare that fur wasn’t all that bad, if you were forced to wear it in deep mid-­winter, or the spokesperson for an anti-­smoking campaign announce that the odd cigarette now and then wasn’t going to do you that much harm.

‘Not all GPs will be able to have an interest in women’s health,’ Dr Briggs said defensively to host Nuala McGovern, as if women were a small minority group and not 51 per cent of the population. 

Which caused ­Carolyn Harris MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Menopause, to retort: ‘What we need is every doctor, whether they’re interested in women’s health or not, to have a basic understanding of what the ­menopause is, so women wouldn’t have to go to private clinics, or wouldn’t have to turn to alternatives.’

Hear, hear!

What, I wondered, would the estimated 60,000 women currently unable to work due to crippling symptoms of the menopause made of Dr Briggs’s comments? That figure was revealed this week, in a major report by the NHS ­Confederation, which said that the cost of this sickness to the UK economy is in the region of £1.5 billion a year.

The report said that women experiencing severe symptoms of the menopause are twice as likely as the general population to be economically inactive. ­Professor Geeta Nargund, a ­senior NHS consultant, said: ‘Our report’s findings are ­unequivocal: women’s health issues and the disparity in ­gynaecological care represent a pressing public health ­challenge… it is essential that the Government prioritises­ ­funding… to improve health outcomes for all women.’

The Panorama documentary that sparked the Woman’s Hour debate, which showed the ­private practitioners at Newson Health clinics prescribing ­oestrogen at a range far higher than the recommended dose, undoubtedly made for ­concerning viewing – concerning enough that the BBC decided to run a ticker tape along the bottom of the screen during the episode, warning women not to cut their HRT without first speaking to a medical professional.

This pointed to the reality of the menopause for many: that it is not the process that women are fearful of, as Dr Briggs made out, but hormone replacement therapy, which comes with an ever-so-slightly increased risk of breast, ovarian and womb cancers.

But this risk has been overstated, in part because the results of a trial in 2002 that linked HRT to breast cancer were ‘misleading and distorted for publicity’, leading to ‘misinformation and hysteria’, according to Professor Robert Langer, who worked on the study. ‘Good science became distorted and ultimately caused substantial and ongoing harm to women,’ he wrote in 2016.

The Panorama documentary painted menopause campaigner Dr Louise Newson, an HRT advocate, as predatory and exploitative. But I have met ­Louise on several occasions, and was briefly treated by her, and have always found her to be motivated by a desire to help women rather than harm them.

Menopause campaigner and HRT advocate Dr Louise Newson

Like many private practitioners, she set up her clinic because she found the NHS wasn’t taking the menopause seriously, and she wanted to change that. And change it she has; arguably, without Newson’s campaigning, hundreds of thousands of women in this country would know little or nothing about the menopause and the options available to them.

That these private menopause clinics are not regulated in any way only goes to show how little women’s health is ever taken into account by the powers that be.

As I’ve written on these pages before, my mental and physical health was transformed by HRT – but I was only taken seriously by another private doctor, having been told I was too young by my NHS GP (both my mother and grandmother had gone through menopause by the age of 43; I am now 44).

It’s not an exaggeration to say that these drugs enabled me to stay afloat during a time that involved intense suicidal ­ideation, and I shudder to think what would have happened had I not had the privilege of being able to afford to go private.

This is the great scandal, really. That institutions such as the BBC and the British Menopause ­Society are pointing fingers at the likes of Dr Louise Newson, and all the companies selling supplements that claim to calm hot flushes, without stopping to question why on earth this ‘industry’ exists in the first place. 

It’s not because anyone in charge is actually listening to women, that’s for sure.

Reality TV veteran Pete Wicks with his Strictly partner Jowita Przystal

Pete Wicks has revealed he’s finding Strictly far harder than any other reality show he’s taken part in. 

‘I did Celebrity SAS twice and this is harder,’ he told Loose Women this week. ‘It’s more intense and it’s so far out of my comfort zone.’ 

I’m glad he’s doing it. Having ­previously dismissed him as a bit of a Z-lister, I have to say I’m completely charmed by him. ­

Exceedingly ­handsome and funny – I’m on Team Wicks this year.

Bryony in her underwear for the 10k run through London

Readers will by now know that I have a penchant for ­running around in my underwear in the name of body positivity. 

The other weekend, I took part in a 10k through the streets of London in just my pants and bra, and decided to make an Instagram video about it, to let other women know that if I can gallop six miles in my undergarments as a size 20 then they can get out and move too (but in their clothes).

The reel went viral (over a million views), and with it came the usual barrage of comments from people so unused to seeing unfiltered, unedited women’s bodies in the wild, that they have no idea how they actually move. 

‘Your boobs need better support!’ wrote umpteen people, for whom the fact that breasts do actually move when women run seemed to be a ­revelation. 

‘Your running gait is terrible and you’re going to end up needing your knees replaced,’ wrote one particularly analytical viewer, who clearly knows better than my highly qualified physiotherapist.

As ever, I’m reminded: nobody knows a woman’s body better than some strangers on the internet.

Why politics is like fashion

Isn’t it fascinating that the ­various fashion weeks always take place at the same time as the ­various party conferences? 

As I watched all the movers and ­shakers descend on the Chanel show in Paris and the ­Conservative get-together in ­Birmingham this week, it struck me that fashionistas and politicos have more in ­common than they might like; after all, they’re both self-­important navel-gazers who believe the world revolves around them! 

Angelina Jolie with British rapper Akala (Kingslee James McLean Daley) were spotted leaving a restaurant in Milan, Italy, where she is currently filming

It’s lovely to see that Angelina Jolie appears to have settled down with a nice man – apparently, she’s been dating the British poet Akala for more than a year, ­completely under the radar. 

Which goes to show: ­Hollywood A-listers can exist out of the spotlight if they really want to.      

Ever feel like life is a bit…too much? Bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon is here to ditch the shame and dive headfirst into life’s messier bits. Search for The Life of Bryony wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes released every Monday and Friday.