More Than a Label
Why I am moving beyond menopause and perimenopause and reframing women’s health as recalibration, not aging
I have been an OB GYN and hormone physician for more than two decades. Over the years, I have noticed something long before lab results or treatment plans ever begin. Women walk into my office already carrying labels before they tell me their story.
Reproductive. PCOS. Pregnant. Postpartum. Infertile. Perimenopause. Menopause.
These words sound clinical and precise, yet they often flatten a deeply personal and evolving human experience into a single box. Quietly, each label tells a woman who she is supposed to be at a certain moment in her life. A phase. A function. A perceived loss of youth.
I do not believe women are meant to live inside these boxes.
The terms perimenopause and menopause especially deserve to be questioned. For decades, they have been framed through the lens of aging and decline. The language itself implies an ending, a winding down, a slow exit from relevance. Even culturally, these words carry a heaviness that suggests something is being lost rather than something powerful and adaptive taking place within the body.
But what I see clinically tells a very different story.
This stage of life is not a pause. It is not a failure of the body. It is a recalibration.
The brain is recalibrating its response to hormonal signaling. The nervous system is recalibrating stress tolerance and sleep patterns. Metabolism recalibrates energy use and body composition. The immune system recalibrates inflammatory responses. Every system is shifting in conversation with one another. When we call this transition only menopause or perimenopause, we reduce an incredibly dynamic biological evolution to a single absence of cycles.
That reduction shapes how women feel about themselves. It reinforces a cultural narrative that equates hormonal change with aging, invisibility, or decline. Historically, medicine viewed women primarily through fertility, so when reproductive capacity changed, the language framed it as an endpoint. But women’s health does not begin or end with fertility. Longevity, cognitive clarity, strength, sexual health, and metabolic vitality all remain deeply relevant.
Words matter because they shape the lens through which care is delivered.
When a woman is told she is entering menopause, the focus often shifts toward managing symptoms of aging. When I speak with my patients, I shift the conversation toward recalibration. What is the body asking for now. What signals are changing. How can we support brain health, muscle, metabolic resilience, and emotional balance through this transition.
Recalibration is active. Aging sounds passive.
Recalibration acknowledges that the body is adapting with intelligence, not simply declining. It invites curiosity rather than resignation. It creates space for proactive care instead of waiting for symptoms to worsen.
This is why I am moving away from outdated terminology that centers loss. I am not interested in pathologizing normal life stages or reinforcing society’s ageism by defining women solely through reproductive utility. A woman is not her cycle status. She is a complex, evolving system deserving of individualized care and language that reflects growth rather than limitation.
In my practice, there are no rigid timelines and no one size fits all narratives. I focus on listening first, understanding the full context of a woman’s physiology and life, and supporting her through thoughtful, modern medicine. Hormones are not a chapter that closes. They are a lifelong conversation between the brain, body, and environment.
When we change the language, we change the experience.
We move from endings to evolution. From aging to recalibration. From labels to listening.
If you are here, I want you to know that you are not defined by a term created decades ago. Your body is not failing. It is recalibrating.
And I am glad you are here.
