Estrogen Matters: Why Taking Hormones in Menopause Can Improve Women's Well-Being and Lengthen Their Lives -- Without Raising the Risk of Breast Cancer (2024 Revised and Updated Edition)

by Carol Tavris

According to the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a multiracial/multiethnic study that ran from 1996 to 2013 and followed more than 3,000 women as they entered menopause, about 80 percent of women experience some symptoms, and for half of them, those symptoms last for years. The median duration of hot flushes and other vasomotor symptoms among these women was 7.4 years; it was longer (10 years) for Black women and upwards of 12 years for women whose symptoms began during perimenopause.18 Black and Latina women also enter perimenopause much sooner on average, sometimes even in their thirties, so their symptoms start much earlier and can be more severe. Needless