Let’s start with the truth: athletes in surgical menopause don’t exist in the research — at least, not meaningfully.
You’ll find data on perimenopause, on postmenopausal hormone therapy, on the aging female athlete. But when it comes to women and AFAB athletes who’ve had their ovaries surgically removed — especially those still training, competing, and chasing performance goals — the silence is deafening.
And that silence has consequences.
A Missing Chapter in Sports Science
Surgical menopause is not the same as natural menopause. It’s abrupt, complete, and physiologically shocking. When hormones that influence every major system — muscle recovery, tendon elasticity, bone density, thermoregulation, and even cognition — drop overnight, the body doesn’t “adjust.” It scrambles.
Now add the load of athletic training — endurance sessions, strength work, heat exposure, competition stress — and you have a completely different hormonal and metabolic profile than the one most existing research tries to map onto.
Yet the studies don’t reflect that. They barely acknowledge it.
Why the Research Isn’t There
When you start asking why, you quickly realize it’s not because the topic isn’t worth studying — it’s because the system wasn’t built to care about it.
First, there’s the numbers problem. Surgical menopause in athletes is a small subset of a small subset. That makes it statistically inconvenient — not “profitable” enough for funding, not broad enough to attract grants.
Then, there’s the infrastructure problem. Most sports science labs aren’t set up to track hormonal interventions, replacement therapies, or surgical case histories. Researchers want clean, simple variables — and the surgically menopausal athlete is anything but simple.
And, of course, there’s the bias problem.
The Historical Bias That Built the Gap
For decades, female physiology was considered “too complicated” for research. Hormones were seen as messy, unpredictable variables that could skew results.
So instead of designing studies that accounted for those fluctuations, the industry simply excluded us. And while we’ve made progress in representation, that exclusionary mindset lingers — especially in studies where athletic performance meets menopause.
When surgical menopause enters the chat, the conversation gets even quieter. The assumption seems to be that these athletes are “done competing” or that performance is no longer relevant post-surgery.
That’s not just bad science. It’s dismissive.
The Cost of Being Ignored
When you’re an athlete in surgical menopause, the lack of data isn’t academic — it’s daily.
It shows up in how your recovery tanks without explanation.
In the random tendon flare-ups that no protocol seems to fix.
In the fatigue that doesn’t respond to more sleep or better fueling.
In the trial-and-error approach to HRT, because no one studied how it interacts with high-volume training.
You become the experiment.
That’s not empowerment. That’s survival.
The Reality Behind “Niche” Populations
People love to use the word “niche” to justify why these studies don’t get funded. But “niche” doesn’t mean unimportant — it means underrepresented.
Surgical menopause happens for reasons that aren’t niche at all: endometriosis, PCOS, cancer prevention, hysterectomy complications. These aren’t rare diseases. These are everyday realities.
And when those athletes lose hormonal stability overnight, the consequences reach far beyond hot flashes and mood changes. It impacts performance longevity, bone health, heart health, and identity.
This isn’t niche science. It’s overdue science.
Bridging the Gap: What Needs to Happen Next
If sports medicine truly wants to support female athletes, it has to stop pretending this group doesn’t exist.
We need:
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Targeted funding for studies on surgical menopause and athletic performance, not just aging populations.
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Cross-discipline collaboration between endocrinologists, exercise physiologists, and coaches who understand the athletic reality, not just the clinical theory.
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Athlete inclusion in study design — because we know what needs investigating.
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Recognition that hormone replacement therapy in athletes isn’t just “symptom management.” It’s performance physiology.
Until we treat surgically menopausal athletes as a legitimate population, we’ll keep forcing them to rely on guesswork instead of evidence.
Why It Matters Now
This isn’t just about filling a gap in PubMed. It’s about changing how we define performance, health, and longevity for women in sport.
Because the truth is: we’re out here.
We’re training, we’re competing, we’re coaching.
We’re rewriting what midlife and menopause look like — one mile, one lift, one study at a time.
But we shouldn’t have to do it alone.
If you’re an athlete navigating surgical or natural menopause, you deserve better than vague advice and recycled research from male-centered data. You deserve strategies that honor your physiology and help you perform, not just “survive the transition.”
That’s why I created the Mastering Menopause Guide — for those of us living in the gap.
It’s built for masters and menopausal athletes who want to understand what’s really happening in their bodies, how to adjust training and recovery, and how to keep showing up strong even when science hasn’t caught up yet.
Because if the research won’t write our chapter, we’ll write it ourselves — and run right through it.