Menopause: to break the taboo and answer women's questions, a unique center in France

In May, Emmanuel Macron had thought of her to lead a future parliamentary mission on menopause, a subject, he said in Elle magazine, about which "we realized that we knew (it) very, very poorly".

The parliamentary mission project is today "at a standstill" due to political turbulence, according to a source close to the matter, but patients, for their part, continue to need help.

Battery of questions 

Around the age of 50, women stop having periods: their ovaries no longer produce hormones (estrogen and progesterone) and no longer release eggs at regular intervals.

It's menopause, and coping with it can be challenging. The changing body, the impression of tipping into old age, all still surrounded by a certain taboo.

Under tired neon lights, there are two of them waiting, this morning at 7:45, to be received by Christelle Moreau, the center's nurse.

Increased risks

Armed with a battery of questions, the latter first seeks to identify patients to whom menopause poses an increased health risk.

Because if is a normal development of the female body, the phenomenon nevertheless brings its share of problems, the best known of which are hot flashes. More seriously, menopause increases the risk of pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases or osteoporosis, a reduction in bone density that accentuates their fragility.

Hence the nurse's insistence on possible fractures suffered by her patients. In front of her, Julie Bonjour is a textbook case: she has broken her ankles three times in just five years.

“You smoke?”, continues Mrs. Moreau. “Yes”, replies the patient, 46 years old, director of studies at a high school in the suburbs of Toulouse, who confesses to “about fifteen cigarettes a day”.

Hormonal treatment 

“It would be good to stop, because it has an impact on the bones”, continues the nurse. Since menopause is not a disease, there is no cure. But menopausal women can take hormone therapy to take over from the ovaries, especially when they stop working prematurely.

This is the case for Kelly Garcia, who is 43 today, but was only 30 when chemotherapy caused “premature ovarian failure”.

“Women are programmed to receive hormones until they are 50, so if you go through menopause before 40, it becomes an illness, and like any illness, it must be treated”, explains Ms. Trémollières, recalling that premature menopause can also increase the risk of heart attack and d'Alzheimer's.

The advantage of the menopause center is that after a blood test by the nurse, patients only have to, in a well-rehearsed ballet, cross the corridor to reach the bone densitometry room, the barbaric name for the examination aimed at determining bone density.

A regular at the place, Kelly Garcia slips in and lies on her back while a robotic arm scans her lumbar spine (the bottom of the spinal column) and her femoral neck, very vulnerable to fractures.

“Other cities aren't so lucky” to have a menopause center. And, she worries, “some patients find themselves completely helpless when faced with the symptoms they may have”.