Sky Women's Health

You’ve been told hormones cause breast cancer. Then you heard the warning came off the label. You’ve been told to eat less and move more. You’re doing it, and you still don’t feel like yourself. You’re not imagining the confusion. Even the experts disagreed at this year’s Menopause Society meeting. Dr. Carolyn Moyers went back to the data herself. She explains what the FDA’s change to the hormone...

Many women in their 40s and 50s eat the same way and move the same way they always have. Their bodies change anyway. The waistband gets tighter while the scale barely moves. The labs come back normal. The advice is still to eat less and move more. Dr. Carolyn Moyers talks with Dr. Traci DeSplinter, a board-certified OB/GYN and obesity medicine physician, Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, a...

A lot of women in midlife put off their mammogram. Some are afraid of what it will find. Some are busy. Some have seen ads suggesting the radiation is a reason to skip it, and that a different scan can take its place. For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Dr. Carolyn Moyers talks with Dr. Ann Kurian, a board-certified general surgeon with fellowship training in breast surgical oncology. They talk abo...

Joints that started aching in your 40s. A shoulder that froze for no clear reason. Workouts that used to build strength and now just leave you sore. Imaging that comes back clean. Women are told this is just getting older. That isn't an answer Dr. Carolyn Moyers talks with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jennifer FitzPatrick about the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. The term was proposed in 2024 to...

Vulvar itching, burning, tearing and pain with sex that never responded to yeast treatment may be lichen sclerosus. In October 2026, the largest randomized trial to date on fractional CO2 laser for lichen sclerosus was published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Dr. Carolyn Moyers explains what it found, what it didn’t, and how laser fits alongside the steroid ointment that remains first-line treatm...

Menopause isn't just hot flashes — it's a window into your heart, your metabolism, and your mental health. Dr. Carolyn Moyers talks with family medicine physician Dr. Tolo about why hot flashes deserve to be treated as a vital sign, what midlife does to cardiovascular and metabolic risk, the mood changes that get missed, and how women and their doctors can catch it early — while there's still time...

The room spins with a turn of the head. Ears feel full for weeks. Ringing starts and doesn't stop. Exhaustion sets in, and because there's no snoring, no one tests for sleep apnea. Midlife women bring these symptoms to their gynecologist, and many have already been told it's menopause. Sometimes that's true. Often it's only part of the answer. Dr. Carolyn Moyers talks with Dr. Ashley Agan, a board...

Hormone therapy can be life-changing. Personalized care does not mean anything goes. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Moyers explains why recreating a monthly bleed after menopause is not the same thing as restoring a menstrual cycle, why endometrial protection matters when systemic estrogen is used in a woman with a uterus, and what clinicians can consider when oral progesterone is not tolerated. She...

The menopause headlines keep contradicting each other — hormones and Alzheimer’s, testosterone as a miracle fix, and a week later, “none of it holds up.” In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Moyers reads the actual studies behind this month’s headlines and tells you what’s real, what got oversold, and what it means for you. In this episode: • Two new studies on hormones and dementia — and the part the hea...

First, the part no one should miss: for most healthy women, hormone therapy is safe and beneficial — and in November 2025 the FDA removed the decades-old boxed warnings that scared a generation away from it. So this isn’t an anti-hormone episode. It’s for the woman who was told she can’t use hormones, or who has chosen not to, and needs to know what comes next. Sparked by a listener’s Instagram co...

You're waking up at 3 a.m. drenched, your moods don't feel like your own, and your once-predictable period has gone haywire. You finally ask for help — and you're told to just take a birth control pill, or to come back when your cycles stop. Here's what I want you to know: you don't have to wait to feel better, and the pill is one option, not the only one. In this episode, I take that myth apart a...

Your bones are not static. They're living tissue that rebuilds your whole life — and in the years around menopause, that balance can tip toward loss, fast. So why are most women told to wait until 65 for their first bone density scan? In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Moyers welcomes back bone health specialist Dr. Kristi Tough DeSapri of Bone and Body Women's Health to talk about why 65 is too late fo...

You've eaten the same foods for decades — and suddenly, in your 40s, wine gives you a headache, your skin itches at night with no rash, you're congested year-round, and hives show up out of nowhere. If you've ever typed "why am I suddenly allergic to everything" into Google, this episode is for you. Perimenopause changes more than your cycle — it changes your immune system. Estrogen and histamine...

You call the pharmacy to refill your estradiol patch — and it’s on backorder. Again. Or the brand changes every month, the adhesive won’t stay on, and nobody can tell you when your medication is coming back. Estrogen patches are in shortage across the United States, and the strain is spreading to progesterone capsules and estradiol gels and creams. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Moyers sits down wit...

She's been told to have a glass of wine. To just relax. That the pain is in her head. And she is still in pain — every time she has sex, every time she uses a tampon, sometimes just sitting at her desk. What she may have is a hypertonic pelvic floor: muscles stuck in a state of tension they cannot release on their own. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Moyers sits down with Dr. Chailee Moss, board-cert...

What does your hormone history — birth control in your twenties, hormone therapy at menopause, or even the age you went through menopause — actually do to your brain? A landmark 2026 brain imaging study gives us a structural answer. Published in NeuroImage (Honea, Watts et al., 2026), this secondary analysis from the IGNITE trial scanned 459 women ages 65 to 80 using high-resolution MRI and measur...

Burning. Itching. Tearing during sex. Told it's "just dryness" or "just menopause" — but the treatment never works. It might be lichen sclerosus or lichen planus — two skin conditions that affect the vulva and are diagnosed late (often years late) because they get mistaken for recurrent yeast infections or normal aging. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Jill Krapf of the Center for Vulvovaginal...

If you've ever had urinary symptoms that antibiotics didn't fix — and your cultures kept coming back negative — this episode is for you. A new 2026 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine followed 253 women with recurrent UTIs and persistent urogenital symptoms despite negative urine cultures. What researchers found reframes everything: 85% of these women had hormonally mediated vestibulodynia, 75...

Muscle loss in midlife is real, it is measurable, and it starts earlier than most women are told. Declining estrogen during perimenopause directly affects skeletal muscle — reducing mass, impairing muscle protein synthesis, and accelerating a process called sarcopenia. By the time many women notice it, they've already lost meaningful ground. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Moyers is joined by Dr. Dia...

Is progesterone the same as a progestin? It sounds like it should be. It is absolutely not. And that distinction matters more than most women — and many providers — realize. This is the conversation Dr. Carolyn Moyers has multiple times a day in clinic — especially with women in perimenopause who are trying to understand their options, figure out why a previous hormone regimen made them feel worse...

You asked — Dr. Moyers answered. In this Ask Me Anything episode, Dr. Moyers — board-certified OBGYN, Menopause Society Certified Physician, and Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health — tackles 18 of the most pressing questions she hears from midlife women every day in her clinic. From hormone therapy and blood clots to low libido, vaginal changes, bladder leaks...

Two-thirds of dementia cases are women. Two-thirds of caregivers are women. And the brain changes that lead to dementia begin 20 to 30 years before symptoms appear — which means, for most women, that window falls directly during the menopausal transition. That's not a coincidence. It's a clinical reality that neurologist Dr. Ashanthi Gajaweera has built her entire practice around. Dr. Gajaweera is...

Did you know that declining estrogen weakens your body's natural ability to buffer stress? Dr. Moyers and yoga therapist Tatiana Miller (Rx4Life) explain exactly what happens to your stress response in perimenopause and menopause — and what you can do about it today. No overwhelm. No jargon. Just real science, simple tools, and a conversation that might make you feel seen for the first time in a w...

Your ferritin lab came back flagged. Your doctor said "don't worry about it." But what if it's actually telling you something important? At Sky Women's Health, we noticed something in our own practice data: an unusually high proportion of healthy perimenopausal and postmenopausal women were coming back with elevated ferritin. Our pathologist dug into the numbers. The answer had everything to do wi...

*A note before you press play: this episode includes an open conversation about depression and suicidal ideation. If that's not where you are today, it's okay to come back to this one later. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988.* Dr. Yami Cazorla-Lancaster, host of the podcast I AM HUMAN, is a board-certified pediatrician and lifestyle medicine physician who has lived through...