Hot flashes? Study shows usefulness of menopause website

A free National Institutes of Health-funded website is giving women the tools to better understand menopause and make decisions about managing their symptoms, according to a recent study in the journal of Maturitas. 

Created by seven researchers, MyMenoplan.org  provides information about what happens to a woman during menopause, explained one of the paper's authors, Dr. Susan Reed, a UW Medicine OB-GYN who also studies the topic. The site, which was launched in 2022, covers everything from hot flashes to sleep problems, as well as the pros and cons of different treatment options. It’s designed to answer common questions and make conversations with healthcare providers easier, Reed said. 

“There is so much disinformation out there for women on this topic. This is a very important resource for them to have,” she said. 

Too many are getting information from TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Google AI feeds, Instagram, amateur podcasts and commercialized books. Many of these contain biased information, Reed said. 

“Facts and science are under attack," she said. "If you look online, you find treatments about menopause symptoms which have no science to back them up.” 

Women also may feel uncomfortable talking about the condition, Reed noted, and silence can have significant health consequences. Menopause remains one of the most under-discussed stages of life, even though more than 1 million women in the United States experience this natural biological transition each year, the paper's authors said. 

The drawbacks of not addressing menopause range from increased risks of osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease to sleep disturbances and mood changes. 

The website helps users determine their menopausal stage — perimenopause or postmenopause. They can then enter symptoms and create a “menoplan” based on personal preferences, Reed said. Eventually site users will have a list of treatments they can discuss with their primary-care providers.  

“Existing decision tools for menopause typically deal with one treatment at a time, most commonly whether or not to take hormone therapy,” the authors noted. “None comprehensively take into account the full range of symptoms women may experience and the many treatment and coping options for those symptoms.”  

In the last 18 months, the site has garnered 285,000 page views. Most of the viewers have come from the United States, Canada, U.K, India, Spain and South Africa. In the past two weeks, users from Turkey and Ireland have logged in as well.  

In the study of over 200 women randomized to visit the MyMenoplan website, site users came away with more knowledge about symptoms and treatments, and more confidence in discussing treatment options with their primary-care providers, than did the control group who picked their own sites, the authors noted.  

Based on these findings, Reed encourages all of her patients to come in with a list of questions they’ve developed from viewing the MyMenoplan site prior to an appointment.  

This research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (5R01AG048209). 

For details about UW Medicine, please visit http://uwmedicine.org/about.