Menopause affects the brain in complex ways

How menopause affects mental health

Menopause, a natural biological process, occurs in three stages: perimenopause (hormone fluctuations), menopause (end of menstrual cycles), and postmenopause (12 months without menstruation). Hormonal shifts during this time can affect neurotransmitters, increasing the risk of mood disorders.

The gaps in menopause research and their effects

Nearly all studies (99%) researching the biology of aging don’t consider menopause in their setup. A Harvard professor noted that about 75% of aging-related diseases are likely influenced by menopause. In this article, she discusses how gaps in research are negatively impacting how the medical system can effectively treat aging women. Read her analysis of the issue here.

Menopause and perimenopause symptoms may affect both the mind and body

Women going through these aging transitions may experience some common physical and mental symptoms to varying degrees, including hot flashes, bladder control issues, brain fog, and vaginal dryness. This article dives into some of the most common symptoms women might expect during perimenopause, plus what they can do to relieve them.

Menopause is a hormonal transition point, like puberty

Yet menopause isn't talked about as much. In this podcast episode by Houston Methodist, a Texas-based hospital, the host speaks with a gynecologist with a specialization in menopausal medicine about what menopause really is, and how women and the people in their lives can navigate this next life stage.

How aging degrades neural functioning in the brain over time

Aging affects the brain perhaps more than any other organ in the body. Throughout life, the brain experiences radical shifts in the number of neurons, synaptic connections between neurons, and hormone levels that regulate our mood and processing.

By 2030, roughly 6% of the world's population will be in menopause

An estimated 25 million women pass through menopause annually, with a projected increase in the number of women in menopause in both lower-resource and higher-income populations in the years ahead, highlighting the social and economic value of focusing on menopause care.

Menopause, once not discussed in polite company, is now a plot point in some television shows

Menopause has long been a topic left out of film and TV. But some shows, like "The Change," and celebrities, like Jennie Garth, are now openly talking about it. This article breaks down how Hollywood is starting to come around to the menopause conversation and how celebrities are talking about their own personal experiences, as well as advocating on Capitol Hill.

HRT for menopause may not help with mental health or sleep says a large 2026 analysis

A recent analysis investigating the effects of menopause and HRT use on mental health, cognition, and brain health suggested HRT did little or nothing to aid with mental health and sleep. But the researchers caution that, among other data gaps, they didn't have information on which HRT formulations were used among their nearly 125,000 participants, so results may have varied by drug treatment.

Watch what depression does to the brain

This video explores the neurobiology of depression and why unraveling the complexities of this disease and its etiology will potentially improve treatments. Effective depression treatment, as this video highlights, can eventually make a depressed brain look like a healthy one on brain scans.

Late-onset menopause lowers osteoporosis risks, but heightens the risks for certain cancers

Defined as when a woman starts to experience perimenopause after age 55, this delayed menopause onset is linked to elevated risk of developing breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers.

Menopause may become a $600B industry

Companies marketing products and supplements to alleviate menopause symptoms and make life easier during this life stage have become a gold mine. This 2022 article explores how and why companies have swooped into this space, and whether you should trust them or not.

'Menobelly' is real, with more fat stored around the abdomen as estrogen levels drop

The way fat is carried in the body shifts with menopause, with those pounds increasingly settling around the abdomen instead of the hips and thighs. Exacerbating this phenomenon, muscle mass also begins to decline, so calories stick around longer than usual. Resistance training, including push-ups and planks, alongside a heavier protein diet can help.

MS Drugs reduce inflammation, helping reduce relapses and slow disease progression

Disease-Modifying Drugs calm the body's inflammatory response to help stave off relapses—when new or existing MS symptoms show up for a day or longer. Avoiding smoking, exercising, reducing stress via mindfulness, checking for vitamin D deficiencies, drinking more water and eating well, all can slow disease progression. [The jury's still out on if HRT around the time of menopause may reduce dementia risk](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(25)00122-9/fulltext) Estrogen can reduce inflammation and support neural growth in the brain, and some research has suggested that beginning hormone replacement therapy around menopause—versus later in life—reduces Alzheimer's disease risk. Still, a recent systematic review concluded that taking HRT didn't affect dementia risk, regardless of when women started taking it, so the science remains unsettled.

A pregnant woman's brain sheds gray matter, perhaps explaining 'baby brain'

The brain areas involved in processing information and emotions decrease by an average of almost 5% during pregnancy. Researchers discovered in a 2025 study that this mostly temporary change—the brain hadn't fully returned to its normal size six months after pregnancy—seems to be associated with self-reported improved bonding and less hostility toward the child postpartum.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

What happens to your brain when you burn out?

You've probably heard of burnout, also known as the feeling of exhaustion that happens after a long period of being overwhelmed or stressed. It's often associated with work and careers, but other parts of life, like parenting, can cause burnout, too. Scientists are figuring out what happens, biochemically speaking, in the brain when burnout hits—and spoiler alert, it includes a neurotransmitter called glutamate. Watch this video to learn more.

Why we should care about renaming the hormonal disorder PCOS to PMOS

The new name, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, nods to the hormonal disruptions that cause this condition, which affects roughly one in eight women. People with PMOS may have symptoms including irregular periods, trouble conceiving, weight gain, acne, undesired hair growth, and more. The earlier name, polycystic ovary syndrome, was a misnomer because women with the condition don't have cysts in their ovaries. Rather, they have masses that are actually immature follicles. World health experts think the condition often goes undiagnosed.

Females are diagnosed with MS roughly 3 to 4 times more often than males

This PBS documentary traces a filmmaker's personal journey with MS after being diagnosed at age 26. It encompasses both his efforts to stymie the disease's progression and his search for answers about the disease, when, statistically, he seemed at low risk due to his gender, lack of known family risk, and other factors.

Hearing loss is linked with brain volume reductions

The brain looks different as a result of hearing loss, with reductions in brain volume overall and in specific areas, and these changes are hypothesized to impact cognition. Exactly why hearing loss alters cognition is an active area of research, but theories include that the elevated cognitive load of straining to hear affects brain power available for thinking and memory and that hearing loss leads to social isolation which boosts dementia risk.

Listen to how the gut microbiome influences your emotions

The gut-microbiome connection may involve the enteric nervous system, a collection of hundreds of millions of neurons throughout the gut that transmit signals up the vagus nerve to the brain.

Face and neck massages improve the removal of brain cell waste products in mice

A study identified that massaging mice and monkeys' faces and necks enhanced the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. Because CSF has been shown to flush out proteins linked to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the research hints at non-invasive treatments to reduce the severity of these diseases.

What happens to the brain during migraine?

Migraine is a neurological condition that can cause debilitating symptoms across various bodily functions. So, what exactly is happening in the brain during these attacks? This five-minute video briefly overviews the internal machinations behind the painful episodes. An incapacitating headache is a common symptom of migraine, though migraine can occur without any headache.

How Alzheimer's disease affected one family as symptoms progressed

News program 60 Minutes interviewed a couple navigating aging and Alzheimer's over a 10-year period to illustrate the effects of the disease on their lives.

What happens when we sleep

Sleep is a highly specialized and complex process that begins via signals from a region of the brain called the hypothalamus. As explained in this overview video from The Economist, the hypothalamus maintains our circadian rhythm by using light cues from our environment to regulate sleep via a compound known as melatonin. Once asleep, the brain begins the "sleep cycle" and progresses through the four stages of sleep over and over again each night.

The overlooked physical causes of insomnia

Persistent lack of sleep is dangerous for anyone, but women are especially unlikely to have their symptoms taken seriously. This article highlights the physical causes of insomnia—a condition often written off as solely psychological—and the importance of early diagnosis. The writer, Courtney Maum, was diagnosed with an anterior nasal valve collapse as the source of her insomnia.

How we frame stress—as good or bad—seems to alter how it affects us

This podcast discusses research that indicates stress perception may drastically affect how we respond to it. In research exploring if our stress is presented as diminishing our health versus if we're told it enhances our performance, it will lead to differences in how successful participants are at performing tasks—with the enhancers doing better.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Ebola infects and disables immune cells, triggering a cascade of events that leads to small blood clots throughout the body, weakening blood vessels and interrupting blood flow to key organs.

Doctors differentiate between a phobia and fear by asking patients whether their fear interferes with their day-to-day activities.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.