In an age of social media, younger generations of women have become more aware of women’s health issues, such as perimenopause and menopause. While this increased awareness is driving positive conversations and removing stigma, it’s also opening space for the marketability of healthcare to exploit vulnerable women seeking answers.
A highly-skilled perimenopause and menopause specialist, Dr Fatima Khan tells Women’s Agenda that it’s important to understand why women are turning to social media and Google for answers to their health and wellbeing questions.
“There’s a huge awareness on social media, which is good because it means women are finding information they need,” says Dr Khan.
However, she says that when it comes to understanding the specific symptoms and impacts of perimenopause and menopause, “healthcare professionals haven’t been educated at Med school or training, and the GPS aren’t trained.”
“So, when [women] are going to their doctors, [the doctors] are not recognising it,” she says, adding that this leads to women “finding themselves on the internet searching for their symptoms, because they don’t add up”.
Dr Khan has an Advanced Menopause Certification accredited from the British Menopausal Society and Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive and Healthcare of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She has also undertaken further training in the USA on optimising hormonal health for longevity.
Working with patients at her clinic in Melbourne, Dr Khan combines a holistic approach with clinical expertise to offer treatment solutions that support people’s mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.
Dr Khan sees “women who haven’t slept for years, they’re waking up drenched in night sweats. I’ve got women with such debilitating anxiety and brain fog that they’re quitting their jobs.”
To help with these symptoms, she prescribes Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), describing this as “life changing for women.”
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a medicine that replaces the hormones estrogen and progesterone that decline during menopause.
Dr Khan worked in England before setting up her clinic in 2020 here in Australia. During this time, she says she’s seen “a big shift where women are more confused than ever”.
“They have lots of awareness, so the shame and stigma is not there,” she says. “But when they go to the doctor, they’re not getting the help they need, and then they are going towards social media and the internet, which of course, isn’t regulated, it’s not fact checked, and so now they’re falling target solutions which may not have evidence behind them.”
Last year, a report from the Senate inquiry into issues related to menopause and perimenopause was tabled in Parliament, with 25 recommendations, including improvements to healthcare professional education.
Dr Khan says Australia is “very lucky” to have had this inquiry, but that now we must take action to implement the recommendations and improve support for perimenopause and menopause.
When it comes to post-reproductive health, she says “there should be compulsory training of GPs because, for a majority of women, the first port of contact would be their GP, and if that [health professional] doesn’t have the training to diagnose [perimenopause or menopause], then those women will feel gaslit.”
While Dr Khan looks after women seeking support for perimenopause and menopause, she says support needs to be coming from both general practitioners and specialist care.
“It needs to be a multidisciplinary unit, looking at women holistically, not just HRT, because we need to look at all aspects of health- supporting their mental and physical and emotional health,” she says.
Dr Fatima Khan will appear at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday 9 March as part of All About Women, featuring in Feeling the Heat.