Sex, Hormones, and What's New For Post-Menopausal Women - #155

Does hormone therapy really cause breast cancer? Board-certified breast oncologist Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky joins Jill Foos to separate the science from the fear for women in menopause and beyond. In this episode: HRT and breast cancer risk: why type, dose, timing, and your own baseline risk matter What the FDA's 2026 boxed-warning change does and doesn't mean Dense breasts, 3D mammograms, ultrasound, and MRI: who needs what Family history and genetic testing: when to look deeper, even after a negative BRCA test Vaginal estrogen for breast cancer survivors with dryness, painful sex, or UTIs Protecting your bones on aromatase inhibitors Alcohol, visceral fat, exercise, and nutrition myths, including sugar, soy, and dairy What's new in breast cancer care in 2026 Dr. Teplinsky is Head of Breast and Gynecologic Medical Oncology at Valley-Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Care and author of Beyond the Pink: Navigating Life, Health, and Breast Cancer. This episode is for education, not medical advice. Talk with your provider about your own risk and options. Find Dr. Teplinsky: Website: https://interludecancerstories.com/ IG: @drteplinsky Stay connected with JFW:

Seed cycling, cortisol supplements, "cortisol face," and hormone-balancing diets. The wellness industry is selling hormone balance everywhere, especially to menopausal women. Endocrinologist Dr. Gillian Goddard, MD, explains why most of it is built on a false premise, and what women actually need to understand about their hormones after menopause. Dr. Goddard has more than 15 years of clinical experience and a particular expertise in endocrine diseases affecting women. Gillian is the author of the popular The Savvy Patient newsletter about women's hormonal health and the book The Hormone Loop. She is board-certified in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. She joins Jill to cover: ✦ What hormone "loops" are, and why balance is the wrong goal ✦ Why TSH alone can miss thyroid disease, and what a complete thyroid workup includes ✦ Hashimoto's, and why hormonal transitions are high-risk windows for thyroid disease ✦ Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and what current evidence says about HRT ✦ Cortisol, stress, and sleep ✦ Why "eat less, move more" stops working after menopause ✦ GLP-1s like Ozempic and Mounjaro, including compounded versions and protecting muscle If you've been told your labs are normal, but you know something isn't right, this episode is for you. Find Dr. Goddard: Website: https://parkavendo.com/meet-our-team/gillian-goddard-m-d/ IG: @TheSavvyPatient YouTube: @TheSavvyPatient Stay connected with JFW: Book your 60-minute Menopause Care Consultation: https://www.jillfooswellness.com/menopause-care-consult-page Follow on Instagram: @jillfooswellness Follow on Facebook: @jillfooswellness Follow on YouTube: @jillfooswellness Grab discounts on my favorite menopause wellness products: https://www.jillfooswellness.com/health-products Enjoy 20% savings and free shipping at Fullscript for your favorite supplements by leading brands: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/jillfooswellness/store-start Subscribe to the JFW newsletter at www.jillfooswellness.com and receive your FREE Guide on How To Create Your Menopause Health Equation Ebook. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation here: https://calendly.com/jillfooswellness/15-minute-zoom-consultations If you're a Chicago-area midlife woman, check out the Chicago Menopause Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to navigating menopause locally with experts: https://chicagomenopausecollective.org This episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Talk with your healthcare provider about your individual care.

Dry, burning, itchy, gritty eyes. Vision that fluctuates day to day. Headaches you never used to get. If you've chalked this up to allergies, screens, or "just getting older," this episode is about to change how you see it — literally. Estrogen and androgen receptors exist throughout the eye, yet almost no one connects hormonal transition to eye health — including most doctors. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Joseph Allen, doctor of optometry and founder of Doctor Eye Health on YouTube (1M+ subscribers), to have the eye health conversation that should be a standard part of every menopause discussion and rarely is. We cover: Why dry eye disease affects up to 61% of postmenopausal women — and why your eyes can water excessively while still being dry The full spectrum of menopause-related eye symptoms: itchiness, fluctuating vision, light sensitivity, eye strain, twitching, and floaters The extraordinary link between eye health and cognitive function — including how amyloid plaques linked to Alzheimer's can show up in the retina years before a brain scan detects them Why postmenopausal women face elevated risk for glaucoma, macular degeneration, cataracts, and diabetic retinopathy — and what a real screening schedule looks like The nutrients that matter most for your eyes after menopause, including lutein, zeaxanthin, omega-3s, vitamin D, and zinc Whether blue light glasses are actually evidence-based, or just another wellness trend What to ask for at your next eye exam, and what you're probably not telling your eye doctor that you should be If no one has ever asked about your eyes as part of your menopause care, this episode will tell you exactly what to bring up next time — and why it matters far beyond your vision. Find Dr. Allen: https://www.youtube.com/@DoctorEyeHealth

There is a symptom of menopause that almost nobody is talking about. It is happening quietly, over months and years, and most women never connect it to their hormones until it becomes something they can no longer ignore. It is happening in your ears. Dr. Natalie Crossland, an audiologist and tinnitus specialist at New York Hearing Doctors, shares her expertise on hormones and hearing for women over 50. Because the connection between estrogen decline and your auditory system, your vestibular system, your balance, and your cognitive health is real, it is well-researched, and it is almost completely absent from the menopause conversation most women are having with their providers. Here is what stops most women in their tracks: the World Health Organization has formally identified untreated hearing loss as one of the most significant modifiable risk factors for dementia and Alzheimer's disease. One in five women will develop Alzheimer's by age 65. If untreated hearing loss is associated with up to a five-fold increased risk of cognitive decline, the conversation about your ears isn't just a quality-of-life conversation. It is a brain health conversation. In this episode: ✦ Why estrogen receptors exist throughout the auditory system — and what estrogen was actually doing for your hearing before menopause ✦ The 2023 systematic review showing hearing sensitivity in women declines more rapidly at the onset of menopause than in men of the same age ✦ The WHO evidence connecting untreated hearing loss to dementia — and whether treating hearing loss actually reduces that risk ✦ The vestibular system — what it is, how estrogen decline affects it, and why so many postmenopausal women experience dizziness, vertigo, and balance problems they have been attributing to anxiety or aging ✦ BPPV — benign paroxysmal positional vertigo — why it spikes at menopause and why it is connected to vitamin D deficiency and bone density in ways most women have never been told ✦ The fall risk connection — vestibular dysfunction as a direct contributor to falls, the leading cause of injury-related death in women over 65 ✦ Tinnitus — what it actually is, the full range of what women experience beyond ringing, how directly it is connected to estrogen decline, and whether it is treatable ✦ The emotional and psychological toll of tinnitus — sleep disruption, anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal — and how it compounds the mood changes already happening in menopause ✦ Itchy ears and excessive wax buildup — the menopause symptoms nobody is connecting to hormones and what is actually causing them ✦ The earliest signs of hearing loss postmenopausal women consistently miss — including the cocktail party effect and how the brain masks early loss in ways that create cognitive fatigue ✦ The hearing aid industry — the cash-pay model, the $3,000 to $7,000 price tag, OTC alternatives, scare tactics used by providers, and how to find an audiologist you can actually trust. For every woman who has been turning up the TV, asking people to repeat themselves, lying awake with a ringing in her ears, or feeling off-balance in ways she has been attributing to stress or aging — this episode was made for you. Your ears and your brain are connected in ways your healthcare team is almost certainly not discussing with you. That changes today. Find Dr. Natalie Crossland: New York Hearing Doctors — newyorkhearingdoctors.com Stay connected with JFW: Book your 60-minute Menopause Care Consultation: https://www.jillfooswellness.com/meno... Follow on Instagram: @jillfooswellness Follow on Facebook: @jillfooswellness Follow on YouTube: @jillfooswellness Grab discounts on my favorite menopause wellness products: https://www.jillfooswellness.com/heal... Enjoy 20% savings and free shipping at Fullscript for your favorite supplements by leading brands: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/jil... Subscribe to the JFW newsletter at www.jillfooswellness.com and receive your FREE

Nobody built a skincare brand for the woman you are right now. Sally Mueller, co-founder and CEO of Womaness, decided to fix that. Part of Sally's path to building Womaness included a breast cancer diagnosis, a doctor's appointment that finally connected the dots on symptoms she had been ignoring for years, and a shopping cart full of products she refused to buy because of how they looked, smelled, and were formulated. That frustration became Womaness, which launched with 13 products spanning skincare, body care, wellness, sexual health, and incontinence, and designed specifically for the skin, body, and life of a postmenopausal woman. And in this episode, Sally pulls back the curtain on everything, from the science, the formulation decisions, the ingredients that actually work, and the ones that are just marketing. In this episode, we discuss: What is actually wrong with most menopause and intimate health products that were available before Womaness, including the packaging problem, the tone problem, and why tone determines whether women actually use the product The real science of what happens to skin during and after menopause, including the collagen loss of up to 30% in the first five years after the final period, the role of estrogen receptors throughout the skin, and what that means for barrier function, hydration, elasticity, and wound healing How Womaness chooses ingredients, from identifying the specific skin change to researching clinical evidence to selecting peptides, ceramides, hyaluronic acid, and niacinamide and what each actually does for postmenopausal skin. The honest clean beauty conversation: what is evidence-based and what is marketing, including whether organic skincare actually works Formulating for sexual health, pH balance, vaginal microbiome, why most existing lubricants and moisturizers are formulated incorrectly for menopausal vaginal tissue, and how Womaness approaches intimate care differently. The supplement line, including Pycnogenol and Bacognize, two ingredients most women have never heard of and what makes them relevant to postmenopausal health. This is the episode for every woman who has stood in a skincare aisle not knowing what to trust, and every woman who deserves a brand built specifically for the postmenopausal skin she is actually in right now. Find Sally Mueller and Womaness: Website: www.womaness.com Instagram: @womaness Stay connected with JFW: Book your 60-minute Menopause Care Consultation: https://www.jillfooswellness.com/menopause-care-consult-page Follow on Instagram: @jillfooswellness Follow on Facebook: @jillfooswellness Follow on YouTube: @jillfooswellness Grab discounts on my favorite menopause wellness products: https://www.jillfooswellness.com/health-products Enjoy 20% savings and free shipping at Fullscript for your favorite supplements by leading brands: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/jillfooswellness/store-start Subscribe to the JFW newsletter at www.jillfooswellness.com and receive your FREE Guide on How To Create Your Menopause Health Equation Ebook. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation here: https://calendly.com/jillfooswellness/15-minute-zoom-consultations I f you're a Chicago-area midlife woman, check out the Chicago Menopause Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to navigating menopause locally with experts: https://chicagomenopausecollective.org