This book repeatedly refuses to tell you what to choose, and that is deliberate.

It would be easier to write a louder one. Divide the world into sensible women and misinformed women, brave doctors and hopeless doctors, good hormones and bad hormones. It might even feel reassuring for an afternoon. It would not be honest.

A treatment decision cannot be separated from the woman making it. Your symptoms matter, and so do your medical history, your priorities, your previous experiences and how much uncertainty you can live with. Respecting that is not sitting on the fence. It is treating you as an adult making a medical decision about your own body.

Inside is what the evidence currently supports about HRT and the alternatives, where it is genuinely contested, which questions are worth asking, and how shared decision-making is supposed to work when you are the one in the room.

Your Menopause Options is Book Seven in The Menopause Clarity Series.