In a recent episode of Diary of a CEO, menopause expert Dr. Mary Claire Haver shared a story from her early medical training. A 40-year-old woman presented with various health issues, including weight gain, decreased libido, high blood pressure, rising cholesterol, depression, and fatigue. After she listed her symptoms, her senior resident quietly said, “Don’t write this in the chart, but we call that a WW, or whiny woman, around here.” (It’s the Oct. 26, 2025 episode.)
Dr. Haver encountered the same pattern in multiple disciplines. Female patients were branded as whiny women, gyn neuro, or TBD (total body dysfunction).
In other words, medicine had institutionalized the dismissal of women’s symptoms.
Ignoring women is a disservice when it comes to autoimmunity
Research has shown what millions of women have experienced: women’s pain and symptoms are routinely minimized in healthcare. Both doctors and nurses have been shown to under treat women’s pain, even when symptoms are identical to a man’s.
When it comes to autoimmunity, this means that tissue and gland damage is allowed to continue unchecked as symptoms worsen.
Roughly 80 percent of autoimmune patients are women, yet many endure years of misdiagnosis or dismissal before an autoimmune diagnosis. Instead, they are told it’s stress, anxiety, aging, their weight, or psychosomatic.
The Dismissal of Perimenopause and Menopause
Research has shown what women have learned the hard way: Most medical providers do not have the training, competency, or experience to treat perimenopause and menopause, despite tens of millions of women experiencing symptoms that range from inconvenient to debilitating.
Instead, women turn to other women in online bio-identical hormone replacement therapy groups.
Meanwhile, untreated menopause can have devastating consequences on bone, cardiovascular, and brain health in many women.
The Same Pattern Across Other Conditions
Patients with long COVID and ME/CFS (chronic fatigue), who are disproportionately women, also described being dismissed, disbelieved, or told their symptoms are anxiety.
Researchers now openly describe these common occurrences as “medical gaslighting” and “medical misogyny,” particularly around gynecological and reproductive pain such as endometriosis.
Why Functional Medicine Matters
In a functional medicine model, we listen, investigate underlying mechanisms, and manage interconnected physiological systems.
We give patients who have routinely been dismissed a place to land. When a woman reports multiple “mystery” symptoms, we don’t treat her as if she’s being dramatic. She’s describing early immune activation, hormonal dysregulation, or metabolic dysfunction that conventional labs might not capture, but that functional medicine is specifically designed to investigate.
The women with autoimmune disease, perimenopause, long COVID, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, POTS, and the dozens of other complex conditions that fall through the cracks of conventional medicine deserve to be heard and treated.
Schedule an appointment with Heather Harper, NP at our PalmaVita Clinic to discuss your HRT options.