Women don’t need menopause tea and meno-friendly nighties. They need doctors to take them seriously

‘All the meno-messaging can influence your appraisal of what’s happening in your brain and body’ … Photograph: Posed by model; izusek/Getty Images

Ladies! Are you tired all the time, sweaty and hot, or headachy? Do you have a range of the vague complaints (laziness, hysteria, dissolute habits, general languishing) that would have seen you committed to a 19th-century asylum? Are you lacking in joie de vivre? Maybe you’re perimenopausal!

Or maybe you’re not: being tired, hot and over everything are also symptoms of simply being alive in spring 2026. That’s not what the internet wants you to believe, though: last week, experts issued a warning about the deluge of perimenopause and menopause misinformation online and the risks that can pose to women, including unwanted pregnancies and a failure to seek a diagnosis for serious health conditions.