Michelle Obama, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Tracee Ellis Ross, Salma Hayek and Oprah Winfrey are among the celebrities who’ve talked openly about menopause in recent years and have shed light on a topic long considered taboo.
Even New York City Mayor Eric Adams joined the conversation last January, when he said that if men experienced menopause, “they would get a paid vacation.”
Menopause is “one of the most under-researched, undertreated and underdiagnosed fields of medicine, especially as far as the impact on the brain is concerned,” said Dr. Lisa Mosconi, an associate professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine. “For a very long time, the vast majority of research was done on men. Men don’t go through menopause.”
Mosconi’s new book, “The Menopause Brain,” offers guidance about menopause, particularly on how it affects the brain. The book covers bias against women in menopause, the brain-hormone connection, hormonal and non-hormonal therapies, and the health care approach known as “integrative health.”
Although menopause is perhaps best known for changing reproductive organs, it also changes the brain, according to Mosconi, who also directs the Alzheimer’s Prevention Program at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian.
She recently spoke with WNYC’s Kousha Navidar on “All Of It” about menopause, self-care and other health topics. Their conversation has been edited below.
Kousha Navidar: When did your research start to focus on menopause?
Dr. Lisa Mosconi: My research started to focus on menopause in 2016. I have been studying women’s brain health for the vast majority of my 20-year career. I started really young because I have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease. Something that many people don’t realize is that almost two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients are women.
I always wanted to know why, and what is the individual risk for every woman, and what kind of factors may be triggering this risk. My research led me…
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