The menopause and dangers of quack doctors

It has become relatively rare for the news to feel in any way encouraging so, when something good does happen, it seems worth celebrating. Last month, health secretary Wes Streeting announced that, from 2026, NHS health checks will start including questions about the menopause.

The scheme, which allows people without pre-existing conditions between 40 and 74 to get an MOT every five years, had until now focused on heart and kidney health. “Women have been suffering in silence for far too long,” Streeting said. “No one should have to grit their teeth and just get on with what can be debilitating symptoms or be told that it’s simply part of life.”

He is, of course, entirely right. Three quarters of women suffer from a variety of symptoms as they go through the menopause, with a quarter of them describing them as “severe”. From hot flushes and insomnia to brain fog, dry skin, depression and night sweats, the condition can be debilitating.

Crucially, it was also largely ignored by medical professionals for a long time, and is still arguably downplayed by many of them. Ask women undergoing those physical changes about their medical experiences, and you will notice that the whole thing remains a bit of a lottery. Still, in the 21st century, women have to fight to be taken seriously when talking about their bodies.

It’s what drove Emily Cleghorn to publish Unwell Women, in 2021. The author was diagnosed with systemic lupus, a serious and incurable condition, after years and years of being ignored and belittled by doctors.

In the book, she warns that being mistreated by healthcare professionals can easily push angry, frustrated and desperate women into the hands of quacks. “The industry knows that women with these health conditions are being let down by traditional mainstream medicine,” she wrote, “so it tailors itself to being caring, listening, seeing you as an individual.”

This is why the news announced by the health secretary matters so much. The move is a good one in and of itself, obviously, but it may also save women from the clutches of cranks and conspiracy theorists.

As RFK Jr’s bafflingly cynical yet popular “Make America Healthy Again” movement showed last year, there just isn’t as much space between woo-woo beliefs and the far-right as there may once have been.

If, say, someone has legitimate problems but cannot find any answers, hope or comfort from the establishment, they are likely to fall for the promising lies of snake-oil merchants online. From there, it isn’t hard to fall fully down the rabbit hole. Losing your trust in the mainstream means immediately becoming more amenable to any and all stories about why said mainstream may in fact be harmful.

As we’ve seen across the Atlantic and increasingly closer to home, bringing those people back from the darker corners of social media takes a lot of time and effort, and isn’t always possible. Much has been said by politicians and the press about algorithms, Silicon Valley giants and armies of bots over the past few years – rightfully so – but we ought to also talk about the real life reasons why so many people do end up being seduced by such sinister forces.

While, say, tanning your private parts, drinking your own urine or injecting yourself with heaven-knows-what may seem insane to most people, there is a certain type of despair that comes from being worried, and being in pain, and feeling like no-one is listening to you, or taking you seriously. If some kook or freak reaches out and acts like the first person to ever care about your suffering, wouldn’t you be tempted to listen to them?