Women urged to be wary around menopause misinformation on social media

Aimee Spector, professor of clinical psychology of ageing at University College London, raised concerns around misinformation, saying she has seen this particularly around claims being made about links between HRT and dementia.

Women have been advised to look for “evidence-based information” around menopause and avoid inaccurate information on social media.

A seminar co-hosted by the World Health Organisation mainly discussed what is known about the cognitive effects of menopause and current research in this area globally.

Dr Nicole Jaff, a South African academic and certified menopause practitioner, said research into menopause and its effects is now at a peak.

“There's a lot of information out there,” she said.

“But I would say please look for the evidence-based information, not for the influencers and the misinformation, but those who are giving guidelines, who are giving information.” 

She highlighted research being done on cognitive changes in menopause and how some women are affected with brain fog, indicating this is a developing area of research.

“I'm very excited about the non-hormonal treatments that are now available, especially for women who could never take hormone therapy because of breast cancers and various cancers, who can now take it,” she said.

“I'm extremely excited about people who are standing up for evidence-based medicine, for science, who are actually fighting back against a lot of the social media and influencers who are not giving evidence-based information and making life very difficult for women because they think they should be forever young or buying this or buying that.” 

She advised women and healthcare workers to read new guidelines recently issued by the International Menopause Society. These are available free to download on its website.

The seminar also heard from Aimee Spector, who is professor of clinical psychology of ageing at University College London.

She also raised concerns around misinformation, saying she has seen this particularly around claims being made about links between HRT and dementia. These claims are sometimes that HRT reduces the risk of dementia or sometimes that it increases the risk.

“I think there's also lots of misinformation,” she said. “And I think that there's huge variations in how even professionals and doctors interpret this information.” 

She was part of an international research team commissioned by the WHO to assess published studies on the issue last year. The institutions involved also included the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin.

“The first thing to say is that the quality of evidence was very low,” she said.

“Nine out of the 10 studies we looked at were observational, which means that you're observing patterns over time. But you don't necessarily know whether that's due to the hormone therapy or not.

“Our overall recommendation was that there's insufficient evidence for menopause hormone therapy in terms of either increasing or reducing the risk of dementia. In other words, we don't know either way.” 

This means, she said, women should decide to use HRT for menopause symptoms not based on their concerns around dementia, saying: “It's recommended for menopause symptoms, but it's not recommended to reduce dementia. And I think a lot of people are saying that.” 

The menopause on the brain webinar was part of an ongoing series hosted by the WHO and other global health agencies.