Kudos to Melinda French Gates for highlighting and funding the gap in women’s healthcare during menopause. (NYT Opinion, Page 4, Sunday, June 7, 2026, “Menopause should not be such a mystery.”)

I would add that aging should not be such a mystery, either. Gates’ call for education and funding might be even more effective if it included the realization that there may be dozens or even hundreds of hormones that decline as we age, leading to the familiar loss of muscle, bone, and brain function.

Fortunately, we are now in what I call the “Anabolic Era” of medicine (specifically orthopaedic medicine, my specialty). For instance, we no longer remove torn tissues such as meniscus and ligaments without replacing them, nor do we simply inject corticosteroids to shut down healing after injury.  We use the growth factors in the patient’s own blood (PRP) and recruit the stem cells from the patient’s own body to stimulate tissue repair and regeneration. We don’t operate on people without following up with well-defined exercise programs to help them return fitter. faster and stronger than they were before they were injured.

So why do we ignore the receding levels of known hormones (e.g., testosterone) and peptides in both males (and females), and not restore them to all patients? One answer may lie in the fact that testosterone was tarnished as a replacement hormone by the abuse seen in weightlifters in the 1970s, and women were almost always excluded from the ensuing medical studies, especially with testosterone. Fraudulently reported studies of estrogen and progesterone, suggesting that hormones can cause cancer, sharply curtailed their use to diminish the specific physiologic changes and symptoms of menopause.

Today, our institute is addressing these issues with studies focused on using testosterone to diminish the surgery-induced muscle wasting seen in all patients. If this strategy works (only the safety trial has been completed so far, with positive results), then this type of approach can be extended to not just post-surgery patients, but to treating the hormonal deficits that accompany aging in both men and women.

Extending these studies to identify the many other stimulants to muscle, bone, and brain function will diminish the mystery of menopause, while extending the options for all people to “play forever.”

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