The No-Nonsense Guide to Menopause Book

Here's what drew me to this book: Sound scientific information, and an appendix that promises to give readers the ability to distinguish between sound science and marketing come-ons. An evidence-based medical approach, coupled with a feminist viewpoint that menopause is a normal life stage that need not necessarily be medicalized. Relatively unbiased (but opinionated and engaging) presentation of facts, instead of a one-size-fits-all prescriptive approach (eat only low glycemic index foods! take bioidentical hormones! come to my speaking tour and buy my snake oil! etc). Authors' opinions strongly influenced by the results of the Womens Health Initiative clinical trial that revolutionized the medical treatment of menopausal women when they were first reported in 2001 (and rightly so), and that bias laid out for all to see right in the first paragraphs of the introduction. Chapters that specifically describe perimenopause (the stage I am in) and depression related to menopause (a symptom that is particularly troubling me). A discussion of the history, politics, and other cultures' experiences of menopause.

However, I had a couple of issues with the way the authors approach the material. The chapter on perimenopause was excellent, as was much of the rest of the book, and it'll be an excellent reference to return to for advice for most symptoms. However, increased incidence of migraine associated with the onset of menopause (another of my symptoms) rates a meagre two sentences in the whole book, with no discussion of how treatment options affect that symptom. More troubling, the chapter on depression was VERY confusingly written, giving equal weight to huge clinical studies and anecdotes from internet chatrooms, talking simultaneously about PMS-like mood swings and depression (NOT the same thing), and drawing few conclusions. Worse yet, it was unsympathetic in tone - the authors seemed to conclude that there is no hormonal basis for depression, then almost immediately contradict themselves with a too-brief 'except during perimenopause' statement that failed to erase the impression that they were telling readers suffering from depressive symptoms that it's all in their heads. If a graduate student submitted this chapter as part of their thesis and I was their advisor, I'd suggest a rewrite.

(Dear other reviewer: If you don't believe in evolution, why would you think a book that explicitly says on its cover that it covers the latest scientific research on the subject is going to speak to you? Seriously? Giving a nonfiction book about science a crappy review because you don't believe in science is ignorant in every sense of the word.)