Menopause Has Finally Entered the Wellness Conversation

19.02.2024 - 17:35 / cntraveler.com / Oprah Winfrey

Melodic mantras and warm oil repeatedly poured across the lower back are parts of Kati Vasti, an Ayurvedic therapy that Karina Steward, founder and chief wellness officer of Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary in Koh Samui, Thailand, swears would put anyone in a pleasure coma. “It's like when you rub oil on the back of a baby and they just pass out,” she explains. But for women experiencing menopause, who are subject to nervous system overload, adrenal burnout, and sleeplessness, such treatments can feel especially powerful, Steward notes. It's one of many tools in Kamalaya's new Radiant Bliss program, a combination of Eastern and Western therapies. Stewart designed it to address women's health concerns at all points in the biological cycle, but the program particularly helps those enduring the mood swings, hot flashes, weight gain, and insomnia that are part of what was once referred to as “the change.”

Cringey euphemisms for the midlife hormonal shift used to be commonplace. But today menopause and its harbinger, perimenopause (which can strike women as early as their 30s), have shed their Geritol-tinged stigma, thanks in part to the openness of stars who've gone through them: Oprah Winfrey and Drew Barrymore discussed hot flashes and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in their special program “The Menopause Talk,” while Naomi Watts unveiled her meno-beauty brand Stripes at membership club The Swell's New Pause Symposium in New York and LA (tagline: “We're coming in hot!”).

Rancho La Puerta grows much of its own food, including olives and citrus, on its 4,000-acre grounds in Baja

Light bites at Sha Wellness Clinic in Spain

Now the same generation that once pushed for insurance coverage of IVF and breastfeeding pods at the office are flocking to spas and wellness retreats with programming that specifically addresses menopause. Spain's esteemed Sha Wellness Clinic recently opened a sexual health unit, prompted by “a shift in societal attitudes and a growing interest from our guests in addressing these issues,” says Cinthya Molina, a clinical psychologist who heads the program. Guests are assigned therapies “based on balancing all hormonal axes” through nutrition, exercise, and supplementation, including plant-based “bioidentical” hormones. Some may also be candidates for a prescription of HRT.

In fact, with hormone replacement therapy still a fraught issue in the US—where the medical establishment has slowly re-embraced it after a faulty 2002 study connected it to elevated breast cancer and heart disease risk—many women are seeking guidance at wellness clinics. The seven-night program for menopausal women at Villa Stephanie in Baden-Baden, Germany, for instance, offers a cornucopia of protocols, including