Doctors challenged widely shared hormone claims, saying puberty hormones are active before adolescence, testosterone does not cause aggression at medically prescribed doses, and melatonin helps people fall asleep rather than stay asleep.
Clinical specialists said hormones are not a "female issue" because men and women share the same major hormones, while cortisol is useful in short bursts and so-called hormone-balancing supplements lack strong evidence.
On menopause, they said a mother’s experience does not reliably predict a daughter’s, modern body-identical HRT is broadly considered safe despite lingering fears from a 2002 study, and extra caution mainly applies to groups such as breast-cancer patients.
The review also highlighted established hormone-linked trends: at least 50% of women gain weight during perimenopause or menopause, girls are entering puberty about a year earlier, and childhood obesity—10.5% in reception and 22.2% in year 6 in 2024-25—is tied to earlier puberty.