There is nothing quite like a memoir to crack you open. Not in the dramatic, obvious way—but in a slow accumulation that happens when you recognize something true about yourself in someone else’s story. A really good one clarifies something you haven’t found the words for. Until now.

The Best Memoirs by Female Authors Will Shift Your Perspective

We’ve always loved sharing the books that move us, and this list has been a long time coming. These aren’t the memoirs you’ll find on every “must-read” roundup (though a few have earned their moment in the spotlight, here’s looking at you, Strangers). They’re the ones we keep pressing into people’s hands, the ones that stay with you long after the last page, and the ones that made us see marriage, ambition, grief, and the shape of a life a little differently. Whatever you’re carrying right now, one of these will meet you there.

On Love, Marriage, and What We Don’t See Coming

Some of the most clarifying books ever written about love are the ones about its unraveling. But I wouldn’t think of these as cautionary. These three books ask the questions most of us are carrying—and think we’re carrying alone.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

Belle Burden’s 20-year marriage ended without warning during the pandemic: her husband announced he was leaving, offered no explanation, and nearly overnight became a man she didn’t recognize. What follows is a reckoning with the ways women make themselves small inside a marriage, and what happens when one woman decides to stop. Consider it essential reading.

$21 at Amazon

Threshold

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life by Delia Ephron

Ephron had just received a leukemia diagnosis when a man she had briefly dated decades earlier reached out by email after reading one of her essays. What followed was a love story that unfolded in hospital waiting rooms and remission celebrations. Tender, funny, and deeply moving—the rare memoir about late-in-life love that earns every emotion it asks of you.

$10.59 at Amazon

Threshold

Trying by Chloé Caldwell

What begins as a fertility story takes a turn that reshapes everything—including what Caldwell thought she knew about her marriage and her own identity. Spare and wry, this is one of those books that gets harder to put down the more uncomfortable it gets. It rides the line between heartbreaking and funny in a way that feels true to life itself.

$13.54 at Amazon

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On Reinvention and Reclaiming Your Story

These are the books about women who rewrote the narrative—sometimes quietly, sometimes dramatically, always on their own terms. The consistent truth: identity is something you build, not something that happens to you.

Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson

A radiant, deeply personal account of a woman reclaiming her own narrative—on her own terms, in her own words. Tender, self-aware, and far more moving than you might anticipate (if, unlike me, you haven’t been hungrily devouring her Substack). Easily one of the most memorable books on this list.

$10.32 at Amazon

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

Alderton’s memoir of her twenties—the bad dates, the great friendships, the slow work of becoming yourself—reads like a message from your most honest friend. If you haven’t read it yet, consider this your sign.

$9.97 at Amazon

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

What looks like a career memoir turns out to be something more interesting: an unusually candid account of a complicated marriage and a series of bold bets that led her to become one of the most beloved figures in American food. Garten writes about luck as something you prepare for, not wait for.

$16.06 at Amazon

More Than Enough by Elaine Welteroth

The second youngest editor-in-chief in Teen Vogue history writes about ambition, race, and what it actually takes to break barriers. This isn’t the polished version, it’s the honest one.

$10.56 at Amazon

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On Inner Life, Grief, and Learning to Rest

Not every book on this list will leave you feeling inspired in the traditional sense. Some will just make you feel less alone in what you’re carrying. I like to think of that as its own kind of nourishment.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

When May’s life came to a sudden halt, she didn’t push through. She wintered. This hybrid memoir weaves her own story with natural history and mythology to make a quiet, radical argument for rest. Not self-help — something richer. One of the most healing reads we know.

$10.29 at Amazon

The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin

Hardin was, by every outward measure, a successful suburban mom — until the opioid addiction she’d hidden for years caught up with her, and she found herself convicted of 32 felonies. Startling in its honesty and unexpectedly redemptive. A book about the gap between the life we show people and the one we’re actually living.

$13.39 at Amazon

A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

In two years, Chung lost both parents—her father to decades of precarity and a healthcare system that failed him, and then her mother to cancer, just as COVID made the distance between them feel insurmountable. This is a book about grief, yes, but also about the particular guilt of upward mobility in America: what it means to build a different life for yourself while the people you love remain at the margins.

$10.40 at Amazon

Drinking: A Love Story by Carolyn Knapp

An older title and one of the most enduring on this list—recommended by Camille’s mom, who still thinks about it years later. Knapp writes about her relationship with alcohol with a novelist’s precision and an intimacy that makes it feel less like confession and more like a conversation. I think it’s one of the most beautifully written memoirs about addiction ever published.

$9.65 at Amazon

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On Family, History, and the Stories We Inherit

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls

The 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for memoir, and unlike anything else on this list. A graphic memoir tracing three generations of Chinese women: Hulls’s grandmother, who survived the Communist revolution, fled to Hong Kong, and poured it all into a memoir—only to unravel in the aftermath; her mother, who inherited that silence and its weight; and Hulls herself, who spent nearly a decade drawing and writing her way toward understanding. If you’ve never read a graphic memoir, start here.

$21.16 at Amazon

The Wildcard

Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton

This is a serious reckoning with a life spent performing a persona she created as armor—and the boarding school abuse at the center of it is not what you’d expect. More than a celebrity tell-all, it’s a story about survival and self-invention that earns its place on any list of books about the distance between who the world sees and who you know yourself to be.

$11.02 at Amazon

This post was last updated on May 7, 2026, to include new insights.

The post These Memoirs Made Us Call Our Therapist (We Have No Regrets) appeared first on Camille Styles.

Milkcaps: Betty Boop by The Hearst Company

https://archive.org/embed/milkcaps_betty-boop

#advertising #ads #marketing #media #beehappy

As well as a double-sized cheesecake worth fighting battles over.

The world may be subject to the annoyances of shrinkflation, but over the past few years, there’s been a running trend in Japan of campaigns where prices remain the same though the amount of food is increased. Family Mart started the show, with Lawson, MiniStop, NewDays, and other convenience store chains now regularly holding these campaigns.

7-Eleven Japan kind of missed that wave, but with the Founding Anniversary Sale that started on May 12, they released six food items that saw increases in their amounts, including a bowl of ramen that weighed a hefty 1,084 grams (2.4 pounds).

From May 19, the second phase of what they’re calling the “Thank You Extra Large” series started, with an addition of another six products. Seeing as we managed to get our hands on the entire set, let’s tap into our gastronomic senses and share our thoughts and feelings on each item.

Salted Rice Ball (156 yen [US$0.98]) – ★★☆☆☆

The Salted Rice Ball is a simple but classic item, with no hidden surprises inside and only an increased amount of rice. While it is a joy just to have an increase in volume, its other characteristics haven’t changed so it’s not bad, but since it lacks excitement, it only gets two stars.

Sausage Egg Muffin (311 yen) – ★★★☆☆

This has increased muffin, sausage, and cheddar cheese, and a total weight of 215 grams (0.47 pounds), making it quite satisfying to eat. Picking it up provides you with a heavy and solid feeling in your hand, and the side-view is really tall.

This is “three stars” that leans heavily and cheesily towards four.

Fluffy and Chewy Pull-Apart Bread with Chocolate Cream (170 yen) ★★★★☆

The pull-apart bread with an increased total weight is visually impressive: it’s just so long. The impact is strong and has a clear sense of value. In addition to the deliciously chewy dough, the smooth chocolate cream contrasting with the chunky chocolate chips is also great.

This bread is a highly rated “four stars”.

Rice Bowl with Beef (645 yen) ★★★★☆

Claiming to be delicious down to the sauce, the beef bowl has seen an increased amount of both beef and rice, recording a weight of 610 grams (1.3 pounds). Eating it up, we appreciated how it wasn’t just bulked up with extra rice, but did in fact include a decent amount more meat too.

This dish is definitely recommended for those who want a voluminous meal: four stars.

Chilled Bukkake Soba with Rich Dashi-Blended Tororo (529 yen) ★★★★☆

Here is a simple dish of tororo soba noodles with increased noodles, sauce, and tororo (grated yam). With the total weight of 549 grams (1.2 pounds) making it slightly inferior to the beef bowl, it is about 120 yen cheaper, so the value for money is excellent.

Factoring in the increasing temperatures, this cooling and refreshing meal is assuredly worth four stars.

New York Cheesecake (291 yen) ★★★★★

This phase’s winner by far! With a mouthwatering taste that will capture the heart of anyone with a penchant for desserts, this feels like a cheesecake on steroids, having roughly the same weight as two of the regular cheesecakes.

It’s proven to be so popular that it’s out of stock in many of the stores, so prepare for a battle to get it. A hands-down five stars.

Our number one recommendation to try is the New York Cheesecake, so even if you try nothing else from this phase, though they all have their own charms and are delicious in their own right, be sure to swing by your nearest 7-Eleven store to try it.

This item is so good that cheesecake shortages might be a common feature of the coming weeks, but you only have until the final day on Monday, June 1, to partake in this campaign, so keep your eyes locked on those refrigerator restocks.

Related: 7-Eleven Japan Campaign Site
Photos ©SoraNews24
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Hongkongers sweated through the hottest day of the year on Friday, with the Observatory (HKO) recording a maximum temperature of 34.6 degrees Celsius at its headquarters.

The mercury neared 37 degrees Celsius in the northern part of the territory.

Meanwhile, the Observatory noted 1,263 instances of cloud-to-ground lightning on Friday, and 4,859 cases of cloud-to-cloud lightning.

The city is now set to see nine days of rain, the weather service predicts.

See also: How Hong Kong’s elderly face deadly heat inside cramped cage homes

“A broad trough of low pressure will linger over the vicinity of the coast of southern China to the northern part of the South China Sea during the weekend to midweek next week,” the Observatory said.

The amber rainstorm warning was raised at 10am on Saturday as violent gusts swept into the territory, raising the risk of flooding.

See also: NGO warns hot weather can worsen air quality, urges gov’t action on pollutants and cooling measures in hot districts

Climate crisis

Friday marked the hottest “Grain in Ear” solar term ever documented. The ninth traditional solar term, known in Chinese as Mangzhong, signifies a period when awny crops like wheat are ready to harvest.

This week, environmental NGO Friends of the Earth urged the Hong Kong government to prioritise the climate crisis and strengthen its climate adaptation policies, with the city expected to endure an extremely hot summer.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the intensity and frequency of heatwaves have continued to increase since the 1950s due to human-caused climate change. The prevalence of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide – which trap heat in the atmosphere – raises the planet’s surface temperature, with hotter, longer heatwaves putting lives at risk.

See also: How extreme heat became the deadliest silent killer among world weather disasters

Hong Kong has already warmed by 1.7 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, research NGO Berkeley Earth says. Heat and humidity may reach lethal levels for protracted periods by the end of the century, according to a 2023 study, making it impossible to stay outdoors in some parts of the world.

How to Know When Your Business Is Ready to Scale written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

Scaling too fast kills companies. So does scaling too slow. But most business owners never stop to ask whether they have actually earned the right to scale at all. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch sits down with Mark Roberge, co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, founding CRO of HubSpot, and author of The Science of Scaling, to unpack one of the most misunderstood decisions in business growth.

Roberge, helped take HubSpot from zero to IPO, then spent years at Harvard Business School teaching founders why so many fast-growing companies implode. His framework asks a different question: instead of “how fast can we grow,” ask “have we proven we deserve to grow?” The answer requires evidence, not instinct, and not pressure from investors.

This episode is for small business owners, agency owners, and entrepreneurs who are thinking about adding headcount, launching new channels, or entering a new stage of growth. If you want to scale without destroying what you built, this conversation is your roadmap.

Guest Bio

Mark Roberge is the co-founder of Stage 2 Capital and the founding Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, where he grew the company from zero to IPO. He later joined Harvard Business School as a senior lecturer, teaching founders and operators how to scale with discipline. He is the author of The Sales Acceleration Formula and The Science of Scaling, and has spent the past decade as an investor, board member, and advisor helping companies navigate the gap between early traction and sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways

• Product-market fit is not a revenue number. It is a retention metric. If customers are not staying and using your product, you do not have it yet, regardless of how many you have signed.
• Go-to-market fit is the second gate before scaling. It is measured by unit economics, specifically whether you can acquire and serve customers profitably.
• Scaling revenue too fast is a structural problem, not a motivation problem. Hiring 27 reps when you only have one requires 270 qualified interview screens, management infrastructure, and demand generation that most companies simply do not have.
• Build a monthly hiring pace instead of a January 2nd headcount dump. Steady, intentional growth gives you time to build the systems that support each new hire.
• The CRM funnel should not end at closed-won. Retention, engagement, and expansion are stages, not afterthoughts. The Marketing Hourglass is the right model.
• Leading indicators of retention can be defined simply. Slack tracked whether 80% of customers sent 2,000 team messages per month. You do not need a data science team to build a version of this for your business.
• A feature is not a moat. If a competitor can replicate your advantage in six months, it is not long-term defensibility. Founders need a vision for what makes them unbeatable over time.
• The ability to up-level the executive team around you as the company grows is one of the strongest predictors of a successful exit. It is also one of the hardest skills to develop.
• Sometimes the business outgrows the founder. The COO or president model is not failure. It is graduation. The reframe: someone else does the work you hate so you can focus on the work you love.
• AI is accelerating faster than society can adapt. Mark is donating book proceeds to McLean Hospital for mental health research, because the people building this technology have a responsibility to help manage its consequences.

Great Moments (Timestamps)

[00:02] — The opening question that reframes every growth decision: are you betting on a business that is not prepared to win?

[04:04] — Mark defines what it actually means to earn the right to scale, and why most founders get this wrong from the start

[06:25] — The two-step framework: product-market fit and go-to-market fit explained clearly

[09:51] — Half scale too fast, half too slow. Mark explains the Groupon and WeWork examples as two failure modes

[11:40] — How to measure product-market fit without a data science team, using Slack and HubSpot as real examples

[13:29] — John and Mark align on why retention and advocacy belong inside the customer journey, not outside it

[16:31] — Why a feature is not a moat, and what long-term defensibility actually requires

[17:43] — The London School of Economics study on what predicts a strong startup exit (the answer will surprise most founders)

[20:33] — The mental health connection: Mark shares why he is donating proceeds to McLean Hospital and what the AI era demands of technologists

Memorable Quotes

“The decision on when to scale is usually when someone hands you a fat check, which doesn’t sound that strategic.” — Mark Roberge

“Do not let the dashboards and sales funnels in your CRM end at closed-won. That is literally step four of seven.” — Mark Roberge

“A feature is not long-term defensibility. If your competitor can build it in six months, you don’t have a moat.” — Mark Roberge

“We’re basically offering to pay for someone to do all the work you hate so you can do the work you love.” — Mark Roberge on helping founders let go

“We as technicians need to diversify our efforts away from just building and profiting toward helping society adapt to this new world.” — Mark Roberge

UNITED NATIONS: Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman was elected president of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for its 81st session (2026–2027) on Tuesday, defeating Cyprus’s candidate Andreas S. Kakouris in a tightly fought vote that underscores the continuing importance of regional consensus-building within the global body.

Rahman secured 99 votes in the 193-member UNGA, while Kakouris received 91 votes. There were no abstentions. The required majority for the election was 96 votes.

How the election works

The president of the UNGA is elected annually by the 193 member states, with each country holding one equal vote.

According to the UN’s Rules of Procedure, the election is conducted by secret ballot unless members agree otherwise, and a candidate must obtain a simple majority of those present and voting to win.

While the process is formally competitive, it is shaped in practice by a long-standing principle of geographical rotation, under which the presidency alternates among regional groups.

For the 81st session, the Asia-Pacific Group was entitled to nominate candidates, leading to a contest primarily between Bangladesh and Cyprus-backed contenders within the agreed rotation framework.

The president-elect assumes office at the opening of the UNGA session in September 2026 and serves a one-year term, presiding over plenary meetings, managing debate, and facilitating negotiations among member states.

Significance of the outcome

Bangladesh’s election is notable for several reasons.

First, the margin reflects a competitive race within a system that often produces consensus or unopposed candidates. The relatively close result—99 to 91—signals a more contested political environment within the UNGA, where regional alignments and diplomatic campaigning increasingly matter.

Second, the presidency is a high-visibility role in global diplomacy. Although the UNGA president does not set binding policy, the officeholder plays a key role in shaping the agenda of debates on international peace and security, development, climate action, and UN reform. The president also helps steer negotiations on procedural and sometimes politically sensitive resolutions.

Finally, the result highlights Bangladesh’s growing diplomatic profile within multilateral institutions. The presidency is often viewed as both symbolic and strategic, offering the holder country an opportunity to influence consensus-building across 193 member states during a period of heightened global tensions.

Rahman will formally take up the post at the opening of the 81st UNGA session in September 2026.

FM Dar extends felicitations

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar extended felicitations to his Bangladeshi counterpart over his appointment as the UNGA president.

In a social media post on X, FM Dar said, “Having closely engaged with him, I am confident that his vast diplomatic experience and steadfast commitment to multilateralism will guide the Assembly with distinction. I look forward to continuing our engagement at the United Nations and working together to strengthen multilateral cooperation, advance shared global priorities, and promote dialogue, peace and sustainable development.”

He also wished Rahman success in this important responsibility and endeavour.

As women navigate hot flushes, sleep issues and changing waistlines, there’s another quieter change that can often occur during perimenopause and post-menopause that deserves just as much attention: heart health.

While women often worry more about the visible signs of midlife and menopause, they are less aware of the hidden shifts in blood fats, blood vessels and metabolism that can silently raise the future risk for cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in women worldwide.

Women in their peri-menopause (i.e. from the time when periods start to become more erratic till one year after the complete loss of menstruation) and post-menopause become more vulnerable to cardiovascular disease because falling oestrogen levels trigger an unfavourable shift in blood fats, body fat distribution, blood pressure, glucose control, and inflammation.

This untimely cocktail pushes the heart and arteries under additional strain. By the late 50s and 60s, many women’s cardiovascular risk approaches – and in some respects exceeds – that of men of the same age, although the pattern and timing of disease differ between men and women.

Lipid metabolism made simple

We term “lipid metabolism” the way our bodies handle fats: from how we absorb them from food, to how they move through the blood, are stored, and are used up for energy our organs and cells need.

Because fat does not dissolve in water, the body packages it into tiny particles called lipoproteins that travel in our bloodstream. LDL particles carry cholesterol out to tissues; when there is too much LDL, or the particles are small and dense, they can more easily enter artery walls and help form plaques. HDL particles move cholesterol back from tissues and artery walls to the liver for disposal, which is why they are often called “good” cholesterol. However, their quality and function matter as much as their amount.

What changes at peri- and post-menopause?

Oestrogen has important protective effects on the cardiovascular system: it helps keep LDL (so-called bad cholesterol) lower, supports healthy HDL (“good cholesterol”), improves how blood vessels relax, and modulates inflammation.

Around the menopausal transition, ovarian oestrogen production drops sharply, and this is often associated with a rapid change in several metabolic pathways rather than a slow, gentle ageing process we would perhaps expect.

Large studies show that around and after menopause women develop higher total and LDL cholesterol, while HDL particles that are smaller and less effective at clearing cholesterol from arteries become more predominant. Triglycerides, a type of fat that circulates in our blood acting as one of our body’s main fuel stores, also increase post-menopause. This combination of fats creates what we call a more “atherogenic” or atherosclerotic plaque-promoting profile. When too many of these fats circulate in the bloodstream, they can build up in arteries over time, contributing to the development of fatty plaques that can gradually narrow the space for blood to flow. Eventually, they sometimes rupture and trigger a clot, raising the risk of heart disease and stroke.

At the same time, women are more likely to develop other cardiovascular risk factors:

• Weight gain, especially around the abdomen
  
• Higher blood pressure
  
• Insulin resistance.

All of the above further raise cardiovascular risk.

Modern studies on the collection of metabolites circulating in our bloodstream (metabolomics) confirm that over half of menopause-related metabolic changes are in lipid-related molecules, tightly linking this hormonal transition to cardiovascular risk.

How do women’s risks compare with men’s?

Before menopause, women generally have a lower risk of heart attack and stroke than men, helped in part by higher oestrogen levels and overall more favourable lipid profiles.

Data from large cohorts show that pre-menopausal women have lower total and LDL cholesterol than men of the same age, along with slightly lower blood pressure and better control of their glucose levels.

After menopause, this advantage shrinks or even disappears.

In a very large study carried out on British people, post-menopausal women actually had higher total and LDL cholesterol than similarly aged men, despite lower rates of other risk factors, such as smoking, hypertension and diabetes.

Clinically, women tend to develop cardiovascular disease (CVD) roughly 7–10 years later than men, but their risk accelerates sharply after menopause and ultimately converges.

Women are also more prone to certain presentations of heart disease, such as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (where the heart looks as if it is pumping normally on scans, but is too stiff to relax and fill properly between beats), and microvascular angina (chest discomfort caused by problems in the heart’s small blood vessels). These forms of heart disease have historically been underrecognised and understudied.

Current approaches: lifestyle changes and lipid-lowering drugs

Across sexes, the foundations of cardiovascular prevention are the same:

• Not smoking

• A diet rich in plant foods and low in trans fats

• Regular physical activity

• Adequate sleep

• Weight management.

For peri- and post-menopausal women, guidelines emphasise checking blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose, and acting early if these are abnormal, because the risk can increase quickly during this time.

Statins remain the mainstay medication for lowering LDL cholesterol and preventing cardiovascular events in people at increased risk. Large meta-analyses show clear benefits in women and men for secondary prevention (after a cardiovascular event such as a stroke).

For primary prevention (before any event occurs), the evidence of benefit in women is less robust than in men, and some analyses suggest that absolute risk reductions may be smaller. However this remains an active area of research. Regardless, women who meet established criteria for statins are still less likely than men to receive them or to stay on therapy – a major implementation gap that extends to other lipid-lowering drug classes, as discussed below.

Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT)

For many years, oestrogen was thought to be a heart-protective therapy, but clinical trials and their overall analysis have painted a more complex picture. MHT is prescribed primarily to relieve troublesome menopausal symptoms: hot flushes, night sweats and vaginal symptoms, and also helps prevent bone loss and fractures. It is not a heart-prevention pill, but its relationship with cardiovascular risk is relevant for any woman considering it.

Our understanding of MHT and the heart has changed substantially over the past two decades. Early large trials raised alarm, but they largely studied women who started hormones in their 60s, long after menopause, using older formulations. When the data were re-analysed by age at the time starting treatment, and newer studies focused on women closer to menopause, a more reassuring picture emerged: for healthy women who begin MHT before 60 or within about 10 years of their final period, cardiovascular risks appear low.

Some studies suggest possible cardiometabolic advantages, but the evidence for hard clinical benefits such as fewer heart attacks or lower mortality remains inconclusive, and MHT is therefore not recommended as a cardiovascular prevention strategy.

Timing and formulation matter.

Modern MHT uses low-dose oestradiol, preferably via the skin (patches or creams) rather than taken orally, since transdermal oestrogen bypasses the liver and avoids the increase in clotting factors associated with oral preparations. Starting hormones around the time of menopause looks very different from starting them in the late 60s or 70s, when baseline cardiovascular risk is already higher.

Current guidelines from menopause societies in North America and Europe recommend a personalised approach: using the lowest effective dose, reviewing risks regularly, and making decisions jointly with a clinician who understands both a woman’s menopausal symptoms and her cardiovascular profile.

In late 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration began removing the broad warnings that had linked MHT to cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and dementia across the board, describing those old labels as misleading when applied to healthy women in their 50s (this regulatory change occurred after the primary literature for this article was gathered). The most prominent warning that remains is for endometrial cancer with oestrogen-only therapy in women who still have a uterus, underlining the importance of using an adequate progestogen alongside oestrogen in those cases.

Newer cardiometabolic therapies

Several newer drug classes offer promising additional tools, especially for women with obesity, diabetes or very high cholesterol.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs), such as semaglutide, were first developed for diabetes but are now also used for obesity. A large analysis of clinical trials found that GLP-1 RAs reduce blood pressure and lower the risk of myocardial infarction, with neutral effects on stroke. The landmark SELECT trial showed that weekly semaglutide (at 2.4 mg) reduced major cardiovascular events by about 20% in people with obesity and existing CVD but without diabetes, an advance that is already changing clinical guidelines.

For people whose LDL remains high despite maximally tolerated statins, PCSK9-targeting molecules (monoclonal antibodies) can lower LDL by around 50–60% and have been shown to further reduce cardiovascular events.

Recent sex-specific analyses indicate that women and men achieve similar LDL reductions and cardiovascular benefits from these drugs.

Unfortunately, as with statins, women are somewhat less likely to receive them in practice – illustrating a persistent treatment gap across lipid-lowering drug classes that warrants urgent attention.

Where is research heading?

The trend is towards a more personalised approach.

Current priorities include better understanding of how menopause-related lipid and metabolite shifts translate into plaque formation, and identifying which women are at greatest risk so that prevention can be more personalised. There is also a call for more trials designed from the outset to answer sex-specific questions, including optimal use of statins, GLP-1 RAs, PCSK9 inhibitors and MHT across different menopausal stages – particularly large randomized controlled trials powered to detect differences in clinical events (heart attacks, strokes, deaths) that can establish whether the promising but inconclusive cardiovascular signals seen in studies using surrogates as endpoints and observational studies translate into robust evidence that is guideline-changing.

For now, the key message is that cardiovascular disease is not just a “man’s disease”, and that peri- and post-menopause is a crucial window to analyse your risk factors, adjust your lifestyle and diet, and, when appropriate and with your medical specialist’s recommendation, use evidence-based medications to protect your heart and blood vessels in the long-term.

The AXA science philanthropy is now part of the AXA Foundation for Human Progress, which brings together the commitments of AXA Group and Mutuelles d’Assurances in the fields of Science, Nature, Solidarity, and Culture. Before 2025, the global science philanthropy was held by the AXA Research Fund, which has supported over 750 projects around the world since its inception back in 2007. To learn more, visit Axa Foundation for Human Progress.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Inés Pineda-Torra est membre de The Endocrine Society and is funded by the following organistations: Instituto Carlos III- (grant PMPTA23/00023), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación-PROYECTOS DE COLABORACION PUBLICO-PRIVADA 2021-2023-(grant CPP2022-010039), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación – Agencia Estatal de Investigación -PROYECTOS DE GENERACIÓN DE CONOCIMIENTO-2021-(grant PID2021-126077OB-I00), Axa Research Fund (Axa Chair 2023).