Why Is a Neuroscientist Talking About the Menopause Transition? My Personal Story

I’m not a menopause doctor. I’m a neuroscientist who spent years designing and running basic science experiments and clinical trials: testing ideas, interpreting data, and watching how science becomes medicine. Especially as it relates to neuroscience and menopause.

How do neuroscience and menopause connect?
Estrogen shapes neural systems for sleep, mood, attention, and memory. During the menopausal transition, fluctuating and declining estrogen alter these circuits, producing brain fog, insomnia, and anxiety – measurable neurochemical changes that explain symptoms and guide evidence-based care.

Early Lessons: Male-Only Research

One of my earliest lessons in research came during graduate work in neurobiology. We were planning an experiment, and my supervisor said, “Order only male mice, we don’t want hormones messing up the results.”

It wasn’t meant as a sexist comment; it was standard practice. Female hormones were seen as a variable to eliminate, not something worth understanding.

That moment symbolized a much bigger truth: for decades, women’s biology was treated as “too complicated” and “too messy” for science. As a result, most of what we know about drugs, metabolism, and brain function comes from research that didn’t include women.

Clinical Research: What Trials Miss About Midlife Women

Fast forward to my work in clinical trials. I saw the same pattern: women underrepresented in studies, perimenopause, menopause or postmenopause almost never discussed, and hormone related symptom clusters dismissed. 

Yet the women I met: patients, colleagues, friends, were describing the same struggles with sleep, mood, and cognition that neurobiology could explain perfectly… if anyone looked.

Why It Matters?

One day, as I struggled with my painful knees trying to get up from the bathroom floor, it clicked.

The same neurochemical systems I’d studied in the lab are deeply affected by estrogen. When those hormonal rhythms shift during perimenopause, so does the brain’s chemistry. It’s not just “mood swings” or “fog”; it’s measurable neurobiology changing in real time. The scientist in me appreciated the mechanism. The woman in me recognized my own personal story.

I’m going through the perimenopause transition myself, and like so many women, I’ve had to dig for real, evidence-based answers. I don’t like trusting random advice on social media or vague wellness claims. I want data that stands up to scrutiny, studies I can analyze and explain clearly. But finding solid science on women’s midlife biology isn’t easy. It shouldn’t take a PhD to understand your own hormones.

Translating Neuroscience and Menopause for Real Life

Menopause isn’t a niche topic. It’s one of the most complex biological transitions in human life, affecting the brain, heart, bones, metabolism, and immune system. It’s a living intersection of neuroscience, endocrinology, and clinical medicine, fields I’ve spent my career navigating.

So I built Ticking Biology to bridge that gap: to take what’s buried in journals and make it understandable, practical, and real. I write for women who want clarity, not platitudes. For those who want to know what’s happening in their bodies and why.

Curious Facts

It wasn’t until 2016 that the U.S.A. National Institutes of Health (NIH) told scientists they had to study both males and females and take sex differences into account when doing experiments. Before that, neuroscience research mostly used male animals. For every study that used only females, there were about 5.5 studies using only males = around 85% male subjects and just 15% female1.
The result? Decades of “universal” science were based on data that didn’t truly represent half of humanity.