A recent Bloomberg investigation, “The Menopause Gold Rush is Failing Women,” makes a compelling point: menopause has become an $18.7 billion market, and women are still not getting what they need. Startups, supplement brands, social media, and a booming wellness industry have rushed to capitalize on a real and long-neglected demand, while mainstream medicine has been slow to catch up with the needs of women in midlife.
The article rightly calls out: “‘What women really need is less noise and more trusted care’...The question is how to get there.”
What the article gets right
The central argument is that money has flooded into menopause without solving the underlying problem. Attention and investment are not the same thing as good care. And in some ways, the surge of interest has created a new problem on top of the old one.
For decades, women’s midlife symptoms were dismissed – brushed off as stress, told their labs were “normal,” and advised to wait it out. That dismissal was a genuine failure, and in many ways it caused real harm. Importantly, suffering symptoms in silence isn’t the only cost; the hormonal changes of this transition have measurable, long-term effects on cardiovascular, neurologic, metabolic, and musculoskeletal health that deserve to be taken seriously. [1]
Much of that dismissal traces back to a single moment. When the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) reported in 2002 that combined estrogen-progestin therapy was linked to increased risks of breast cancer, stroke, and cardiovascular disease, millions of women stopped treatment and many clinicians stopped prescribing. [2] For roughly two decades, menopause was largely untreated and undertaught in medical school and training. We now understand those initial WHI findings were overgeneralized: the risks were smaller than first reported and concentrated in older women started on older formulations, and the “window of opportunity” for women under 60 or within 10 years of menopause was missed entirely. [3] Correcting the record was overdue, and in November 2025 the FDA removed its boxed warning from menopausal hormone therapy products. [4] But the same course correction that restored access has also been taken advantage of – used to market diagnostics and treatments that are unregulated, unproven, or in some cases, potentially unsafe.
The growing recognition of menopause is, on its face, a good thing. The problem is what filled the vacuum.
The pendulum has swung too far the other way
The market has taken women from “nothing is menopause” to “everything is menopause.” The pendulum has swung from dismissal to over-attribution, and both extremes fail women, just in different ways.
When every symptom gets attributed to hormones, and every woman is sold the same supplement or protocol, the woman in front of us is no longer being heard. A medicalized, one-size-fits-all view of menopause can be just as disempowering as ignoring it, leading to potential over-treatment and overlooking other explanations entirely. [5]
Sometimes fatigue, brain fog, low mood, or poor sleep really are perimenopause. Other times they’re symptoms of thyroid dysfunction, iron deficiency, sleep apnea, or the weight of grief and caregiving – different explanations that call for different care, and that both a volume-based healthcare system and a sell-first wellness industry can easily miss. Menopausal symptoms overlap heavily with other conditions, which is exactly why they deserve a thorough evaluation.
Neither dismissal nor over-medicalization: a third path
The evidence is clear that menopausal hormone therapy remains the most effective treatment for moderate-to-severe vasomotor and genitourinary symptoms as well as bone protection, but that it should be selected, dosed, and timed for the individual woman, not handed out or withheld by default. [6]
For a woman going through the menopause transition, the right answer might be hormone therapy. It might be a non-hormonal medication or a behavioral approach like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It might be both. It might be neither, because her symptoms point somewhere else. Foundational interventions with real evidence behind them, like sleep, nutrition, exercise and cultivating psychological wellbeing should almost always be layered in. To know which care plan to choose requires doing the work first: gathering a careful history, doing an in-depth assessment of her risk factors, concerns, goals and preferences, and proceeding with thoughtful, intentional testing. From that deeply integrated approach can a more trusted, precise, and shared decision-making path be forged, and one that has the capacity to evolve as the woman’s needs evolve, too.
How Biograph approaches it
This is the philosophy behind Biograph’s Women’s Health Program, and importantly, it does not stand alone. The program is embedded within the larger Biograph member journey, which is what makes it different. Rather than acting as a separate evaluation focused on reproductive organs or menopause symptoms, the program is a deep dive into a woman’s whole health, of which reproductive history and menopause evaluation is a necessary, but not sufficient, part.
The answer to a market that’s still underserving women isn’t a better-marketed one. It’s better medicine. The encouraging part of the story is that there is a real and growing community of clinicians and researchers committed to doing this the right way. At Biograph, we are committed to a genuine, clinical responsibility to care for women with both rigor and nuance, including being candid about where the gray areas still are in this dynamically changing landscape.
Commonly asked questions about the Biograph Women’s Health Program
What is Biograph’s Women's Health Program?
The Biograph Women’s Health Program provides comprehensive preventive care tailored to the unique factors that influence women's health over time. The program brings together reproductive and menstrual history, hormone health, cardiometabolic and neurologic risk, bone density, body composition, fitness, strength, and more into a coordinated assessment. A dedicated care team then helps translate it into a personalized action plan that actually fits her life.
How is Biograph's Women's Health Program different from routine healthcare?
Routine healthcare is often structured around individual concerns, isolated data points, or specific organ systems. Biograph's Women's Health Program takes a more integrated approach, evaluating how hormonal, cardiometabolic, musculoskeletal, and neurologic health interact to influence long-term health and healthy aging.
Does reproductive history really affect long-term health?
Yes, research shows that factors such as pregnancy complications, menstrual history, and conditions like polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS, formerly known as PCOS) can provide important insight into future cardiovascular and metabolic health. These factors are considered as part of Biograph's comprehensive assessment.
Is menopause part of the Women's Health Program?
Yes. Biograph evaluates the menopause transition not as an isolated reproductive event, but within the broader context of long-term health. The program assesses how shifting hormones affect cardiovascular, neurologic, metabolic, musculoskeletal health, and overall well-being – and when appropriate, menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) may be incorporated as one component of a broader, personalized care plan.
What is included in Biograph's Women's Health Program?+
The Women's Health Program incorporates female-specific risk factors into Biograph's comprehensive health assessment. Depending on individual needs, this may include hormone evaluation, cardiovascular and metabolic assessments, DEXA body composition and bone density testing, cognitive and neurologic evaluations, fitness assessments, nutrition and exercise consultations, and physician-guided preventive care.
Who should consider Biograph's Women's Health Program?
The program is designed for any woman who wants more from her healthcare than reactive, piecemeal care. Whether she’s navigating the menopause transition, trying to understand how her symptoms, risk factors, and clinical data connect, or looking for a more precise roadmap for healthy aging, the program meets her where she is and builds a personalized strategy that evolves with her.
Dr. Chen is a Clinic Physician at Biograph NYC. She joined Biograph after building her expertise at the intersection of innovation and academia. Her foundation includes a joint MD and MPH degree from Tulane University School of Medicine and completing both residency and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine at UCLA.
