Excess Matters

Tag: lifestyle

  • The Menopause Companion by Sasha Davies: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A readable, no-jargon overview of the full menopause transition, written by a health journalist (not a doctor) for women who want one clear starting point before going deeper.

    What Is The Menopause Companion About?

    Picture the stack of menopause books your doctor’s waiting room has never had. One shelf holds thick clinical texts full of mechanisms and dosing tables. Another holds wellness titles promising to “reset” your hormones in 30 days. Sasha Davies wrote something different. She’s a health journalist (her previous books covered artisanal cheesemaking) who partnered with Tori Hudson, ND, a naturopathic physician with nearly four decades of women’s health practice, to produce what is genuinely a companion: warm, organized, honest about what it can’t tell you.

    The book opens with a disarming line that sets the tone for everything that follows:

    “When you ask what menopause will be like, what you’re really asking is a similar but distinct question: What will menopause be like for me? Your question cannot be fully answered with the generalized information we have about physiology, symptoms, and treatments.”

    That’s rare honesty for the genre. Most menopause books imply they have your specific answer. Davies declines to pretend. She explains the physiology, walks through common symptoms, covers treatment options (HRT, non-hormonal options, supplements, lifestyle tools), and then spends a full chapter on something almost no menopause book touches: how to build human support around the transition.

    This is a first-book book. If you’re in your early forties and want a single clear orientation before the fog rolls in, this is a strong candidate. If you’re already deep in symptoms and need protocol-level guidance, it will feel too light.

    What Does the Book Actually Cover?

    Davies organizes the book into three parts, which map cleanly onto the questions most women bring to this topic.

    Part One (What Is Menopause?) covers the physiology without overwhelming. You’ll understand what perimenopause actually means (the transition before the final period, which can last up to a decade), why hormones affect so many systems at once, and why your doctor might be behind on this topic (ob-gyn training has historically given menopause minimal attention).

    Part Two (What Could It Be Like for You?) is the symptom chapter, and Davies frames it well. She presents it not as a checklist you’ll tick through but as a landscape of possibilities, with the explicit acknowledgment that any given woman might experience a few, several, or none of these. That framing matters. The conventional symptom narrative centers hot flashes and cycle changes, which means women whose perimenopause shows up first as anxiety, brain fog, or joint pain often go unrecognized for years, by their doctors and by themselves.

    Part Three (What Can You Do About It?) covers preparation, treatment, and support. This is where Hudson’s clinical voice is clearest, most present in the treatment chapter.

    One idea worth borrowing from the cultural section of Part One: Davies frames menopause as a “three-body problem” (borrowed from physics), where the personal (your body, your symptoms), the cultural (attitudes about aging and women), and the political (healthcare systems, research funding) all interact. A dismissive doctor isn’t just a personal inconvenience; he’s a symptom of a system. That framing helps explain why the same physiology produces wildly different experiences in different women.

    What Does It Say About Nutrition and Weight?

    Honestly: not that much. Davies covers nutrition in the lifestyle section of Part Three with appropriate breadth but limited depth. The basics are there: protein matters more after menopause, processed sugar and alcohol tend to worsen hot flashes and sleep disruption, anti-inflammatory eating patterns are broadly helpful. The weight changes that come with the hormonal shift (especially abdominal fat redistribution) are acknowledged.

    What you won’t find is a menopause-specific nutrition protocol, detailed macros, meal timing guidance, or a rigorous treatment of the metabolic shifts that estrogen decline triggers. Davies is writing a companion, not a diet plan, and she stays in her lane.

    For readers on this site who are managing weight alongside menopause, this book is good background. It won’t replace a more focused resource on the nutrition side (the table at the bottom lists a few that go deeper). But understanding the hormonal context, and understanding that weight changes in menopause are physiological and not a character flaw, is genuinely useful framing even before you get tactical.

    The book also touches on the psychological side of body changes during the transition. Davies uses the concept of solastalgia (the grief of feeling estranged in a familiar place) to name what happens when your body starts behaving like someone else’s. That’s a much more precise description than “mood swings,” and it’s the kind of naming that helps.

    How Does It Handle the HRT Question?

    Better than most popular books, and with appropriate humility. Hudson’s clinical voice takes over for the treatment chapter, and she does the work that many anxious readers need: she separates the actual WHI findings from the cultural panic that followed.

    The short version, as Hudson explains it: the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study was applied far too broadly. The participants were mostly ten or more years past menopause, many had preexisting cardiovascular disease, and the formulations tested (conjugated equine estrogen and synthetic progestin) are not what thoughtful practitioners prescribe today. Current evidence distinguishes meaningfully between transdermal estradiol and oral estrogen, between bioidentical progesterone and synthetic progestins, and between starting hormone therapy close to the transition versus years later.

    Davies does not tell you what to take. Neither does Hudson. What the chapter gives you is the vocabulary to have a real conversation with a provider rather than a reflexive refusal or reflexive acceptance. That’s the correct scope for a companion guide.

    The supplement section is similarly useful for its restraint. Davies doesn’t present a menopause supplement stack. She notes that black cohosh has reasonable evidence for hot flash relief in some women, while many other widely marketed products have little to none. In a category full of expensive supplements sold on anxiety, that kind of honesty earns trust.

    Is The Menopause Companion Worth Reading?

    Read this if you’re in your early-to-mid forties and want a clear, readable orientation to the menopause transition before symptoms become acute. Also a good pick if you have a partner or family member who wants to understand what’s actually happening and how to help without being dismissive.

    Skip it if you’re already in acute perimenopause and need protocol-level guidance on symptom management, or if you want depth on HRT research, neurological mechanisms, or nutrition science. This book will point you toward better resources for all of those, which is one of its better qualities.

    One caveat: Davies is not a clinician. Hudson provides the medical grounding, but the book is written from a journalist’s perspective. That’s mostly a strength (it’s readable, it doesn’t overwhelm), but readers who want clinical rigor will hit the ceiling quickly. The reader rating reflects this split: readers who wanted a light introduction tend to love it; readers who wanted depth tend to feel it stops short.

    For a first book on menopause, especially one that covers symptoms, HRT basics, nutrition, mental health, and support in a single readable volume, this is a solid choice.

    Books Like The Menopause Companion

    BookAuthorBest For
    Menopause BootcampSuzanne Gilberg-Lenz, MDMore clinical depth on HRT and treatment options
    The Science of MenopauseSarah KayeEvidence-based deep dive, less conversational
    The Natural Menopause MethodKaren NewbyNutrition and lifestyle-first approach
    Unlock Your Menopause TypeHeather Hirsch, MDPersonalized symptom framework by type
    The Menopause BrainLisa MosconiNeuroscience behind every symptom Davies describes

  • The Perimenopause Solution by Shahzadi Harper: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A UK menopause specialist and a registered nutritionist make the case that perimenopause starts years earlier than most women suspect, that the symptoms are real and treatable, and that restriction is exactly the wrong response to what’s happening in your body.

    What Is The Perimenopause Solution About?

    You’re in your early 40s. Your weight is doing something new, mostly around your middle. Sleep has gotten strange. Some mornings you wake at 3am, mind racing, no obvious reason. Your appetite feels unreliable, your mood snaps at things it never used to, and the brain that always felt sharp is suddenly foggy. You mention it to your doctor. Your periods are still regular, your bloodwork comes back normal, and you leave with a suggestion that maybe you’re a bit stressed.

    What nobody told you is that you might already be in perimenopause. Not approaching it. Not “too young” for it. Actually in it, years before the hot flashes most people associate with the word.

    The Perimenopause Solution was co-written by Dr. Shahzadi Harper, a UK women’s health physician and co-founder of The Harper Clinic, and Emma Bardwell, a registered nutritionist and member of the British Menopause Society. Both specialize in perimenopause. Both see these women in clinic every week. The book grew out of the conversations they kept having with patients who came in exhausted, dismissed, and convinced that what was happening to them was somehow their own fault, whether from stress they hadn’t managed well enough, weight they hadn’t controlled, or a general failure to hold things together.

    It is a UK-focused book (the prescribing guidance references NHS and NICE, not FDA), but the underlying science travels. If you’ve been puzzling over changes in your body, appetite, or mood since your late 30s and no one has connected those dots for you, this book is likely to feel like an explanation you’ve been waiting for.

    Why Your Body Changed in Your Late 30s (Before You Had a Name for It)

    Here’s the thing most people don’t know: perimenopause and menopause are not the same event. Menopause is technically a single moment, the one-year mark after your last period, average age 51. Everything before that, often spanning four to ten years and sometimes starting in the early 40s, is perimenopause. It is the phase when hormones are actively fluctuating and declining, and it is when the vast majority of symptoms occur.

    The confusion between the two words isn’t just semantic. It’s why a 43-year-old with regular cycles, crushing fatigue, and 3am waking gets told she’s “too young” instead of getting treated.

    Blood tests often miss perimenopause entirely. Hormone levels fluctuate day to day during this phase, which means FSH can read normal on Tuesday and elevated on Thursday. In the UK, NICE guidelines now support diagnosing perimenopause on symptoms alone for women over 45, because the test result is not the diagnosis. The symptom picture is.

    Testosterone is the hormone that falls first. By a woman’s 40s, testosterone levels have dropped roughly 50% from where they were in her 20s, a decline that predates the oestrogen drop most people associate with perimenopause. That fatigue that started years ago, the brain fog, the muscle loss, the flat energy that doesn’t respond to sleep: these are frequently testosterone deficiency symptoms, not character flaws, and not signs that you’re simply aging badly.

    The timeline matters for ExcessMatters readers in particular. The weight changes, the hunger shifts, the mood-driven eating that might have started in your late 30s or early 40s, those weren’t random. They had a hormonal mechanism. Your appetite was not malfunctioning. Your body was changing in a way that had a name, and nobody had given you that name yet.

    What Perimenopause Actually Does to Appetite, Metabolism, and Mood

    Most people know about hot flashes and night sweats. What most people don’t know is that there are over 34 officially recognized perimenopause symptoms, spanning physical, psychological, cognitive, and urinary domains, and only about five of them get talked about. The gap between what women expect and what they experience is where years of misdiagnosis live.

    The weight shift is real and documented. The book is direct about this: perimenopause causes changes to insulin sensitivity and metabolism that increase fat storage, particularly around the middle. Women who gained weight in a consistent pattern for years, then watched it start accumulating differently, are not imagining the change. The mechanism shifted.

    Poor sleep compounds everything. As progesterone drops (one of the earliest declines in perimenopause), sleep quality deteriorates, and the 3am wake window becomes a signature symptom. Disrupted sleep elevates cortisol, which then disrupts progesterone further, which worsens sleep. The book points out directly that poor sleep increases hunger the next day, because of course it does.

    The psychological symptoms are the piece most likely to go misdiagnosed. Menopausal Mood Disorder (MMD) is a hormonal phenomenon characterized by fluctuating (not persistently low) mood, loss of confidence, anxiety, cognitive slowing, and a flatness that women often describe as “not feeling like myself.” It gets misdiagnosed as clinical depression and treated with antidepressants. The authors are unambiguous: antidepressants are not first-line treatment for hormone-driven mood changes. For women who have spent time on SSRIs for symptoms that felt more physical than psychiatric, this chapter is worth reading.

    “When you’re feeling low, you may tend to reach for carbohydrates and other high-sugar foods, so be aware of your personal triggers. Eat nutrient-dense food regularly throughout the day to maintain your food intake and energy balance. Not eating will depress your mood and further suppress the release of those happy hormones.”

    The mood-food loop during perimenopause is not a willpower problem. Low mood drives carb cravings. Carb restriction depresses mood further and disrupts serotonin (90% of which is produced in the gut). The body asking for food is often the body trying to regulate hormones that have lost their footing.

    Why Eating Less Makes Everything Worse

    This is the section most directly relevant to anyone who has responded to perimenopausal body changes by restricting.

    The book’s nutritional framework is built on one central mechanism: blood glucose instability amplifies every perimenopausal symptom. When blood sugar crashes, the body releases cortisol and adrenaline as a stress response. Cortisol disrupts progesterone (described here as the “grounding” hormone). Progesterone disruption worsens anxiety, disrupts sleep, increases irritability, and drives cravings. The resulting cravings, if met with refined sugar or simple carbs, spike blood glucose again and restart the cycle.

    The practical intervention the authors recommend:

    • Protein at every meal to slow glucose absorption and maintain satiety
    • The Key 3 at each sitting: protein, fibre, and healthy fat together
    • No sweet foods as standalone snacks (pair fruit with nuts, eggs with toast)
    • Complex carbs replacing refined ones rather than carbs eliminated altogether
    • A short walk after meals to blunt the postprandial glucose spike

    Note what’s not on that list. Calorie counting isn’t there. Elimination isn’t there. The authors are explicit that very low-carb approaches backfire for perimenopausal women: carbohydrates support serotonin production and calm the nervous system, and removing them entirely raises cortisol, worsens sleep, and compounds the hormonal pressure already present.

    “Perimenopause — a time when your body is undergoing significant adjustments — is not a time for deprivation. No good can come from punishing your body into submission because it doesn’t look or feel like it used to any more. On the contrary, this is a time for positive nutrition — a time for nourishing yourself, filling up on the good stuff and making small dietary and lifestyle shifts that stack up over time. It’s about adding in rather than taking away.”

    The gut layer adds another dimension. The estrobolome (the gut bacteria responsible for metabolizing used oestrogen) means that gut health is directly hormonal health. When the microbiome is disrupted, metabolized oestrogen can be reabsorbed into circulation, adding oestrogen imbalance on top of the fluctuations already occurring. The prescription: 30+ different plant foods per week, fermented foods, prebiotic fiber. Not a detox, not a cleanse, just feeding the microbiome consistently.

    The book’s exercise hierarchy is worth noting too. Resistance training comes first, because oestrogen has anabolic properties and its decline accelerates muscle loss. Muscle loss slows resting metabolism, worsens insulin sensitivity, and accelerates the body composition changes that perimenopause already drives. The authors argue strength training should be prescribed. Walking (second in the hierarchy) is cardioprotective, accessible, and weight-bearing. High-intensity work without adequate recovery raises cortisol and can make symptoms worse.

    Is The Perimenopause Solution Worth Reading?

    Read this if you are in your late 30s or 40s and something has shifted (energy, sleep, weight, mood, cognitive sharpness) and you haven’t found an explanation that fits. Read it if you’ve been told your bloodwork is normal but you don’t feel normal. Read it if you’ve been offered antidepressants for symptoms that feel more physical than psychiatric. Read it if you’ve been restricting food to address weight changes that restriction keeps making worse.

    Skip it if you’re primarily looking for US-specific prescribing guidance (the book references NHS systems throughout), or if you want a deep single-topic treatment of sleep, gut health, or nutrition as standalone subjects. The book covers a lot of ground across 15 chapters, and some sections go shallower than others because of it.

    One caveat: The book is UK-specific in its HRT prescribing detail, and it was published in 2021. The broad science holds, but anyone acting on specific HRT recommendations should cross-reference with current guidance from their national menopause society (the Menopause Society in the US, the British Menopause Society in the UK). Guidelines have continued to evolve.

    For ExcessMatters readers with a complicated relationship to food and dieting: the book contains a fat loss chapter (Chapter 15) that is notably respectful. It names the Health at Every Size movement, acknowledges that not every reader wants to address weight, and frames the nutrition guidance throughout as “adding in” rather than “taking away.” The perimenopausal lens here is useful even if weight isn’t the primary concern, because it explains why the body changes in the ways it does, and why deprivation makes those changes worse, not better. The appetite shifts, the mood-driven eating, the cravings that started in your late 30s are not personal failures. They are a physiological event with a name.

    Books Like The Perimenopause Solution

    BookAuthorBest For
    It’s Not You It’s Your HormonesNicki WilliamsBroader hormone picture including thyroid and adrenals alongside oestrogen
    The Hormone ShiftTamar Gur & Jessica RitchUS-based, covers the full reproductive lifespan including perimenopause
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva RommFunctional medicine approach, more alternative-medicine oriented
    Menopause BootcampSuzanne Gilberg-LenzAccessible, US-focused, integrative approach to the full menopause transition
    The Menopause BrainLisa MosconiDeep neuroscience of oestrogen decline and cognitive health; the science behind brain fog

  • The Happy Hormone Guide by Shannon Leparski: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A plant-based blogger’s practical system for balancing hormones through cycle syncing, seed cycling, and daily lifestyle changes. Accessible entry-level, but light on clinical evidence.

    What Is The Happy Hormone Guide About?

    Shannon Leparski spent her teens and early twenties cycling through the same miserable loop: severe PMS, jawline acne, mood swings bad enough to frighten her parents, and periods so irregular she went 42 days between them. Doctors offered her the pill. Dermatologists offered her harsh medication. Nobody offered her an explanation for why her body was behaving this way.

    She found one eventually, not through the medical system but through a book. Reading Alisa Vitti’s Woman Code triggered what Leparski describes as a complete reorientation of how she understood her own body. Over the next few years, she rebuilt her cycle from scratch using food, lifestyle changes, and phase-specific routines, and documented what worked in her vegan food blog, The Glowing Fridge. The Happy Hormone Guide is that documentation turned into a book.

    Leparski is a holistic health coach and wellness writer, not a clinician. She is transparent about this throughout. The book is organized around what she calls the Happy Hormone Method, a four-part framework covering blood sugar stability, toxin reduction, gut health and estrogen clearance, and cycle-synced living. Two distinctive tools run throughout it: seed cycling (rotating specific seeds across the two halves of the menstrual cycle to support estrogen and progesterone) and adaptogens (herbs like ashwagandha, maca, and reishi used for stress and symptom support). Both are wellness-world staples. The evidence behind them ranges from reasonable to thin, and Leparski does not oversell it.

    What Is Seed Cycling and Does It Actually Work?

    Seed cycling is the practice this book is most associated with, and the one most worth examining before you decide whether to read further.

    The theory: The menstrual cycle divides into two halves with different hormonal priorities. In the first half (days 1-14, menstrual and follicular phases), rising estrogen is the dominant force. In the second half (days 15-28, ovulatory and luteal phases), progesterone takes over. Seed cycling uses four seeds to support each half:

    • Days 1-14: Flaxseeds and pumpkin seeds. Flax contains phytoestrogens and lignans that support estrogen production while helping clear excess estrogen. Pumpkin seeds are high in zinc, which Leparski says “helps prime and support the production of adequate progesterone in the next phase.”
    • Days 15-28: Sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. Sesame contains lignans that modulate estrogen and magnesium for cramp relief. Sunflower seeds are rich in selenium to support liver detoxification of hormones.

    The honest picture: Seed cycling has a following in wellness circles and an origin in traditional herbalism. What it does not have is robust RCT-level evidence. The proposed mechanisms are plausible, flaxseed lignans do influence estrogen metabolism, and omega-3s from pumpkin and flax have anti-inflammatory properties. But whether rotating seeds on a specific schedule produces measurable hormonal changes in healthy women has not been rigorously tested. One small 2023 study found no significant effect on cycle regularity. Leparski cites the Herbal Academy and a lignans-breast cancer study, not clinical trials on seed cycling itself.

    Worth doing? Probably harmless, and possibly useful as a habit anchor that keeps you eating seeds consistently. Worth treating as a proven protocol? Not yet.

    How Does Cycle Syncing Work in Practice?

    Cycle syncing, the broader framework Leparski builds seed cycling into, has stronger physiological grounding even if the phase-specific prescriptions stay somewhat ahead of the research.

    The four phases of the menstrual cycle genuinely do produce different hormonal environments, and those environments do create real differences in energy, metabolism, recovery capacity, and mood. Leparski structures the book’s second half around a seasonal metaphor: menstrual phase as winter, follicular as spring, ovulatory as summer, luteal as autumn. Each phase chapter covers food recommendations, exercise type and intensity, skin changes, and social energy.

    The most practically useful phase guidance covers the luteal phase (days 15-28), when progesterone rises and PMS symptoms accumulate for women whose hormonal balance is off. Leparski’s recommendations for this phase are specific and well-reasoned:

    • Eat complex carbohydrates (sweet potato, oats, brown rice) to support serotonin production and reduce cravings in the days before menstruation
    • Prioritize magnesium-rich foods (pumpkin seeds, dark leafy greens, dark chocolate) for sleep and PMS reduction
    • Reduce or eliminate high-intensity cardio in the late luteal phase, because it spikes cortisol at the exact moment the body needs progesterone to dominate
    • Use sesame and sunflower seeds from the seed cycling rotation

    For the follicular phase (days 6-13), she highlights rising estrogen’s effect on serotonin and dopamine, making it the natural window for new projects, harder workouts, and social energy. The ovulatory phase (days 14-17) gets the endorsement for maximum-intensity training. The menstrual phase gets a clear prescription: rest, warmth, iron and zinc replenishment, gentle movement only.

    The framework requires cycle tracking as a prerequisite. Leparski covers apps (Kindara, MyFLO, Flo), basal body temperature charting, and dedicated monitors. Women on hormonal birth control do not experience the four-phase cycle, so the phase-specific recommendations do not apply while on it.

    What Else Does Leparski Cover?

    Adaptogens for stress and symptoms. Chapter 5 introduces adaptogens as herbs that “adapt to whatever your body needs help with at the time.” Ashwagandha and maca appear in her ovulation and amenorrhea support list. Reishi appears for period cramps. Rhodiola and DIM (diindolylmethane) appear for severe PMS. These are framed as symptom-specific additions after the core protocol is in place, not replacements for it.

    Blood sugar as the master lever. Leparski identifies unstable blood sugar as the most consistently overlooked driver of hormonal symptoms. Glucose spikes trigger insulin responses; insulin resistance creates a cortisol response; sustained cortisol suppresses ovulation. The practical fix is structural: protein, fat, and fiber at every meal, no carbohydrates eaten alone, no skipped meals, caffeine after food rather than before. Straightforward, applicable immediately.

    The gut-estrogen connection. The estrobolome, the subset of gut bacteria that metabolize estrogen, gets a full explanation here. When bowel transit is slow or the microbiome is imbalanced, estrogen the liver has already processed for excretion gets reactivated and returned to circulation. The result is estrogen dominance: heavy clotty periods, breast tenderness, jawline acne. Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale) contain DIM, which supports the liver’s estrogen detoxification. Daily fiber, fermented foods, and hydration support the rest.

    Endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Chapter 2 walks through the average woman’s daily chemical exposure, more than 100 synthetic compounds before leaving the house, and focuses the practical guidance on reducing the highest-absorption products first: deodorant and body lotion (left on skin all day), then cleaning products, then food containers. The EWG Skin Deep database is her recommended audit tool. One category per month.

    Reading your period as data. One of the book’s most distinctive contributions is a short guide to interpreting menstrual blood characteristics. Bright cranberry red blood: balanced. Dark purple-eggplant blood: excess estrogen. Very light pink: possible low estrogen. Clots: probable estrogen dominance or impaired clearance. Brown spotting before the first heavy day: often low progesterone from an anovulatory cycle. A free monthly feedback mechanism that updates faster than lab work.

    Is The Happy Hormone Guide Worth Reading?

    Read this if you are already plant-based (or vegan) and want hormone-specific guidance that works within those constraints, most hormone books ignore plant-based eaters entirely. Also worth it if you are new to cycle syncing and want an accessible, organized entry point before moving to denser clinical books.

    Skip it if you have already worked through Woman Code or In the FLO by Alisa Vitti, Leparski credits Vitti openly as her primary source and the conceptual overlap is substantial. Also skip it if you have active clinical conditions (PCOS, endometriosis, clinical hypothyroidism) that need more than lifestyle guidance.

    One caveat: The seed cycling evidence is limited, mostly traditional and mechanistic rather than RCT-tested, and the book’s clinical rigor overall sits at the lower end of the hormone books on this site. Leparski is honest about her non-clinical background and consistently directs readers toward naturopathic and medical practitioners for diagnosis. That transparency earns trust. Still, women who want clinical depth should read Aviva Romm’s Hormone Intelligence alongside this one, not instead of it.

    The book is a good fit as a gentle first book for women who suspect their symptoms are not inevitable, have not yet dug into the cycle syncing literature, and want practical food and lifestyle guidance they can start immediately. Women already deep in functional medicine territory will find limited new material here.

    Books Like The Happy Hormone Guide

    BookAuthorBest For
    Happy HormonesLara Briden / Nat KringoudisNatural approaches to hormone health with more clinical grounding
    Healthy HormonesSamantha KirkpatrickPractical hormone nutrition with stronger evidence base
    In the FLOAlisa VittiLeparski’s primary source, deeper on the Cycle Syncing Method
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva Romm, MDClinician-authored, stronger on PCOS, endo, and thyroid; best companion read
    Eat Like a GirlMindy PelzCycle-aware eating for women navigating perimenopause and metabolic shifts