“It’s All Just In Your Head”: How Perimenopause Is Becoming Wellness Culture’s Cash Cow

Few fields nowadays have such glaring sexist gaps in knowledge as healthcare. For years, science has prioritized solving men’s inability to perform in the bedroom by producing a little blue pill over trying to solve the many issues in women’s health. To this day, we don’t know what causes preeclampsia in pregnant people, the reason behind or cure for endometriosis, and, most of all, the many scary side effects that come with menopause or the transitional period into it – perimenopause.

“She has hysteria!” many a 20th-century doctor had probably declared, chalking up any and almost all women’s symptoms like hot flashes, brain fog, fatigue, and sleep disruption to a magical deus ex machina. That’s how that old-timey doctor would probably have diagnosed perimenopause back in his day.

Yet today, women’s health is finally given the attention it deserves. In fact, perimenopause has never been this hot (no pun intended). Celebrities and influencers are talking about it, advertising miracle hormone creams and online clinics that will free women from the shackles of insomnia, dry skin, and hot flashes, and women’s midlife healthcare has fallen into the hands of venture capitalists.

Perimenopausal women have been ignored for years, but is the alternative of predatory marketing tactics and questionable health apps really the only other choice? Bored Panda consulted with physicians, OB/GYNs, and even one medical director of a telehealth provider to get to the bottom of what’s been dubbed the “perimenopause industrial complex.”