The Menopause Plan - by Nadia Brito Pateguana & Melissa Hague (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Navigate perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause with clarity, confidence, and a plan tailored to your needs. The Menopause Plan offers a compassionate, science-backed roadmap to preventing metabolic disease and feeling like yourself again.

Most women don't realize they're in perimenopause until they're already struggling. One day, sleep becomes unreliable, moods feel sharper or strangely flat, concentration slips, weight shifts for no clear reason, and anxiety appears out of nowhere. Standard advice--"it's just stress," "it's aging," "it's natural"--doesn't help. And too often, women leave the doctor's office feeling dismissed, confused, and alone.

Many women are never told that menopause is metabolic. Hormonal changes during this transition can affect the way the body works. Women begin to store fat differently, regulate blood sugar less efficiently, and have higher levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad) cholesterol. These effects increase the risk of developing metabolic syndrome, which is associated with a constellation of health issues, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. In other words, all women entering perimenopause are at higher risk of serious long-term health concerns.

In The Menopause Plan, the authors share their perspectives as a gynecologist (Melissa) and a naturopath (Nadia) who have worked with thousands of women through this transition, and as women experiencing perimenopause and menopause themselves. Their approach isn't about choosing camps. It isn't "you must take hormones" and it isn't "you must avoid them." It isn't "try harder to lose weight" and it isn't "don't lose weight at all." It is a calm, middle-ground, balanced approach rooted in:

• Hormone education, in simple, easy-to-understand terms
• Insight into new therapies including GLP-1s and supplements
• Metabolic support through food and fasting options
• Strength training to protect muscle, bone, and brain
• Pelvic and sexual health, addressed openly and without shame
• Sleep, stress, and emotional support
• Evidence-based hormone therapy guidance
• Practical tools, not extremes

Women deserve information to make the best choices for their health--not pressure, not fear tactics, and certainly not dismissal. You are not broken, and you are not imagining this. There is physiology. There are tools. The Menopause Plan gives you the map--and the confidence--to navigate this transition on your own terms.

About the Author

Melissa Hague, MD, is an obstetrician-gynecologist focused on menopause and midlife care, with extensive clinical experience supporting women through the perimenopausal transition. She is the co-author of Start Talking: Intimacy (with Neil Hague and James and Julie Smith). She lives in Wichita, Kansas.

Nadia Brito Pateguana, ND, is a naturopathic doctor who recommends real food and intermittent fasting to help people overcome insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. Her special focus is helping women with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) and women in perimenopause and menopause. She is a health consultant at the Fasting Method and the co-author of The PCOS Plan (with Dr. Jason Fung). She lives in Portugal.