Episode 25: Surprising Ways Menopause Affects Your Body

Menopause is a normal and natural experience that literally all women go through and in this episode we focus on why ‘all roads lead to menopause.’ Those roads are pretty crowded: In 1998 there were over 477 million postmenopausal women worldwide. By 2025, that number will be 1.1 billion. 

Most women are familiar with the more common symptoms like hot flashes, sleepless nights and mood swings, but menopause is so much more than that. It changes everything, often in surprising ways. Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a women’s health expert, joins us for a deep dive on how menopause affects women, head to toe, inside and out, in ways that most women don’t even think about. 

Mary Jane Minkin, MD, is clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale University School of Medicine, and has been in private practice in New Haven (CT) for more than 35 years. Dr. Minkin is board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, and she practices at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She earned her medical degree from Yale Medical School and her undergraduate degree from Brown University. 

She did both her internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, the former in internal medicine, the latter in obstetrics and gynecology. She is a fellow of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (FACOG), and has been a North American Menopause Society Certified Menopause Practitioner (NCMP) since 2002. Dr. Minkin has been Director of the Sexuality, Intimacy and Menopause clinic in the Division of Gynecological Oncology, in the Smilow cancer center at Yale New Haven Hospital since 2008. She has also been Director of the Yale Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (YOGS) since its inception in 2006.

She serves on numerous committees, notably for more than 25 years as Faculty Representative of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology on the Yale-New Haven Hospital Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, on the Yale Infection Control Committee, and on the Yale Antibiotic Drug Utilization Committee. She also serves on the residency selection committee.

• Mary Jane Minkin, MD | Madame Ovary: madameovary.com

• The North American Menopause Society: https://www.menopause.org/

• No Pause in Menopause Roundtable - A weekly series during October and November discussing all things menopause. The programs are archived and can be viewed on-demand.

• National Osteoporosis Foundation: nof.org