What Every Woman Needs to Know About Midlife Health | Dr. Sameena Rahman

There are certain things that women become incredibly good at doing, often without even realizing it.

We push through.

We adapt.

We tell ourselves we're just tired, just stressed, just busy.

As an orthopedic surgeon, I spend my days talking with patients about pain, mobility, and function. Usually those conversations are straightforward. Something hurts, something changed, and people want to understand why.

But I've noticed that conversations with women can sometimes sound different. Women often start by minimizing what they're experiencing before they even describe it.

"I'm probably overreacting."

"It's probably stress."

"I'm sure it's nothing."

And the more I practice medicine, the more I realize that many women have become experts at talking themselves out of their own symptoms.

That became increasingly clear during my conversation with Dr. Sameena Rahman, a board-certified OB-GYN, sexual medicine specialist, and menopause expert whose work focuses on many of the experiences women have quietly accepted for years.

What struck me most wasn't simply the conversation around hormones.

It was the conversation around suffering.

Why Women Have Become So Good at Accepting Less

Throughout our discussion, Dr. Rahman kept returning to an idea that felt much larger than medicine itself: women have become incredibly comfortable accepting less than they deserve.

Less support.

Less time for themselves.

Less attention to their own needs.

As women, many of us are balancing careers, children, marriages, aging parents, and countless invisible responsibilities. We become so focused on taking care of everyone else that eventually pushing through starts to feel normal.

I saw myself in that part of the conversation.

As a physician, a mother, and someone navigating many of the same competing demands my patients face, I understand how easy it is to move yourself lower and lower down the priority list. Somewhere along the way, exhaustion becomes expected and stress becomes something we simply learn to live with.

But adaptation and wellness are not always the same thing.

Understanding Why Women Say "I Don't Feel Like Myself"

One of the most interesting parts of our conversation centered around perimenopause, because I think many women are living through it without even realizing it.

When people think about menopause, they often think about periods stopping. But Dr. Rahman explained that for many women, some of the most difficult symptoms happen long before that final menstrual cycle.

Women describe anxiety that suddenly feels different.

Irritability that seems out of character.

Brain fog.

Sleep changes.

Difficulty coping with stress in ways they once could.

And perhaps the phrase she hears most often:

"I just don't feel like myself anymore."

As she explained the hormonal fluctuations that happen during this stage, I found myself thinking about how many women probably blame themselves first. We assume we're overwhelmed. We assume we're doing something wrong. We assume we're somehow failing to keep up.

Instead of asking whether our bodies may actually be trying to tell us something.

The Conversation Around Women's Heart Health

Another part of our conversation that stayed with me was Dr. Rahman's discussion around cardiovascular health and losing her mother unexpectedly to a heart attack.

As physicians, we know that heart disease remains the leading cause of death in women. Yet many women still fear breast cancer more.

What makes it even more complicated is that women don't always present with what we traditionally think of as heart attack symptoms. Instead of dramatic chest pain, symptoms may show up as nausea, fatigue, back pain, or a general sense that something feels off.

As an orthopedic surgeon, I couldn't help but think about how often medicine places things into separate boxes and separate specialties. We focus on one body part or one complaint at a time, but the body doesn't actually work that way.

Everything is connected.

The Bigger Picture

What stayed with me most from my conversation with Dr. Rahman is that women's health is about much more than hormones.

It's about understanding our bodies well enough to recognize when something changes.

It's about asking questions.

It's about advocating for ourselves.

And maybe most importantly, it's about realizing that suffering should not automatically be considered part of being a woman.

Because women deserve more than simply getting through life.

We deserve to actually feel well.

Want to Learn More?

Follow Dr. Sameena Rahman, also known as @gynogirl, on social media for educational content on menopause and perimenopause, sexual health, pelvic pain, hormone therapy, vaginal and vulvovaginal health, and the cultural and medical barriers that shape women’s healthcare experiences.

Watch this episode on YouTube right now!

For more conversations like this, subscribe to The Resilience Factor wherever you get your podcasts, and find me @dr.pamelamehta on social media.