Ovarian cancer mostly doesn't start in the ovaries. The fix has been available for years; the billing code hasn't. That's first below. Also: somebody is always selling women a miracle, and this week it's peptides — the people advising the FDA on them mostly sell them. Plus three aggressively unsexy risk factors, and another reason "your numbers are fine" is not a useful answer.
Removing your fallopian tubes was linked to a 78% lower risk of the most common ovarian cancer.
The name is doing us no favors — many of these cancers start in the fallopian tubes, not the ovaries.
About 1 in 91 women will get ovarian cancer, so that's a large cut to a small number. But there's no screening test, so it's usually found at stage three, when it's much harder to treat. Removing the tubes, a salpingectomy, has been possible for years. Until 2025, hospitals had no simple way to bill insurance for it as cancer prevention in women without a known genetic risk. That part is fixed.
What to ask: If you're done having children or don't want them, ask whether removing your tubes makes sense for you. It can add about 10 to 15 minutes to a surgery you're already scheduled for, and it can also be done on its own. It's permanent.
FDA advisers just voted to loosen the rules on six unapproved peptides.
Doctors warn that if the pitch sounds too good to be true, it usually is. A few synthetic peptides have been thoroughly studied — semaglutide and tirzepatide, the active ingredients in GLP-1 drugs. The ones filling your feed mostly haven't been tested in humans at all. They show up as powder you mix and inject yourself, sometimes following a tutorial.
In late July, an FDA advisory committee recommended allowing compounding pharmacies to make six of them anyway. That's not FDA approval, and it's not a finding that any of them is safe. Nearly everyone advising the agency on peptides prescribes, makes, or sells them, which you'd think would have come up.
What to ask: Check the label. "Research use only" and "not for human consumption" aren't modesty. They're the loophole that lets sellers skip the prescription and the oversight entirely.
Three midlife risk factors were linked to 13 more years without dementia.
A new study of more than 12,000 adults found that people with normal blood pressure, no diabetes, and no smoking history between roughly 48 and 68 stayed dementia-free about 13 years longer than people with all three risk factors. Thirty years after the study began, versus 17.
Women stayed dementia-free longer than men no matter how many risk factors they had. Black participants had the shortest spans of all. None of the three is a surprise, which is the annoying part.
What to ask: What was my actual blood pressure number? "It's fine" isn't a number. Normal is under 120/80, and 130/80 counts as high blood pressure even though you feel nothing at all.
Breast cancer survivors may still be candidates for hormone therapy.
The Women's Health Initiative scared a generation of women and doctors off hormone therapy in 2002. In November 2025, the FDA started pulling the breast cancer warning out of the black box. But neither really answers the question breast cancer survivors actually have: What about me?
More than 20 studies found no significant increase in new breast cancer, recurrence, or death among survivors using HRT. A pooled analysis of four trials did find higher recurrence risk for survivors with hormone receptor-positive tumors taking estrogen plus progesterone, but not for hormone-negative tumors. So the question isn't settled.
Both the type of cancer you had and the form of HRT you'd take matter.
What to ask: Does the FDA label change affect the advice for someone with my history? Given my tumor type, is estrogen alone an option, or estrogen with a progestogen?
Women with diabetes report more menopause symptoms, and worse ones.
In a new study of 296 Korean women published August 5 in Menopause, those with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes reported about 20 menopause symptoms on average, compared with 16 in women with normal blood sugar. They rated them worse, too.
Hot flashes wreck your sleep. Bad sleep makes blood sugar harder to manage. Higher blood sugar may make the hot flashes worse. It's a loop, and it doesn't much care which end you entered from.
What to ask: Could this be menopause, diabetes, my medications, or some combination? If you take diabetes medication, ask whether you should check your glucose during a hot flash or night sweat.
That's your list for the next time someone says, “Any questions?”
Know someone in the “wait, what the hell is happening” years? Forward this to her.
See you next Friday. — Trista