Dr. Sharon Malone invites all generations to the table for “Adult Women’s Conversation”

What is the right age to start learning about menopause and ladies’s health related to aging? Mid Thirties? Early Nineteen Forties? Mid-40s? According to Dr. Sharon Malone, it’s never too early to start “talking to adult women.”

The Washington, D.C.-based OB/GYN and board-certified menopause doctor just released a book titled “A conversation between an adult woman” which hopes to spark a conversation about women’s health as they age, no matter their age or gender.

Featuring a foreword by former First Lady Michelle Obama, iconic soul song titles, and health advice interspersed with personal anecdotes, the book focuses on an overview of menopause and expert preventative health advice for women and those that will experience menopause – the phases of menopause. reproductive hormones in the body begin to decline as we age.

Even though almost all women experience menopause, which begins between the ages of 40 and 50 (and for black women, it begins up to a decade earlier), many individuals still don’t understand this inevitable phase of life. Malone’s book seeks to inform and equip readers with an arsenal to higher handle their health as they age.

“Here’s the thing about getting older,” Malone said, adding: “It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something terrible on the other end of the spectrum. I’m telling you how to make sure it’s okay on the other end of the spectrum.”

Based on her work and private experiences, Malone has noticed that many individuals seemingly stop talking and occupied with their reproductive health once they reach a certain age.

“When women reach middle age, we think we’re pretty well protected,” she said. “When we’re younger we talk about contraception or fertility or pregnancy, then you’re about 40 and you fall off a cliff.”

Beyond hot flashes, weight gain and changes in sex drive, Malone said that when it comes to discussing menopause with others, “I think it’s a matter of understanding what we even mean by that.”

The “big change,” as many individuals call menopause, occurs in three stages: perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. Malone explained that almost all of the symptoms that many individuals think are related to menopause, including notorious hot flashes, appear during the perimenopause phase, with menopause starting at the time of the last period and never seeming to end.

“Menopause lasts forever,” Malone noted.

In addition to wanting to inform the masses about what they will expect from their health as they age, Malone said she wrote her book because she wanted to prepare people to take the best care of themselves in a world with an evolving health care system.

“Medicine has changed and will continue to change, and not necessarily in a good direction. It’s becoming less and less personal. It becomes less and less effective for you as a patient,” she said. “I should say that the locus of control has shifted from the doctor to you. And that is a possibility. Don’t consider it as all the time a foul thing. But you already know, like I say, nobody will actually come to prevent.

With an aging population, a changing health care system and the day by day ebbs and flows of life, Malone said women’s health is greater than just understanding and coping with menopause. You must also seriously consider how external pressures equivalent to stress can greatly impact your health as you age. Among the personal stories Malone shares on “Grown Woman Talk,” she said she tells the story of her late sister Vivian Malone Jones, who was considered one of the first black students to join the University of Alabama in 1963. Jones died in 2005 at the age of about 60, which Malone, now in her 60s, realizes is a comparatively early age to die. Malone suspects that her older sister’s life was cut short by the stress and toxic environment she had to live in in the Jim Crow South.

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“I want women to understand what stress does to a person and what stressful life does,” she said. “It’s not just acute stress; it’s chronic stress. And this is something that seems to be almost universal among black women. We deal with a lot of stress, whether it’s personal, financial, you know, work stress, but we’re just not built for it.”

Overall, Malone hopes that “Grown Woman Talk” will stimulate intergenerational conversations. Growing up in the South, Malone remembers that ladies never talked openly to younger generations about their health. They often dismissed younger ladies, claiming they were discussing “adult” matters.

“You need to know what your mother’s pregnancy was like; you have to know her perimenopause and menopause,” she explained. “As long as you have at least a good generation or two, it helps you avoid the pitfalls that await you.”