Why So Many Doctors Get Women’s Health Wrong — Even When They Mean Well
Paige Elizabeth
Founder and Coach
A woman recently left a comment on one of my videos:
“Your post low key saved my life. I’ve been on a long health journey and what you shared connected so many dots for me after all the treatments, therapy, dietary, and supplement advice I’ve tried.”
That sentence matters — not because it’s dramatic, but because it isn’t.
She wasn’t asking for another protocol.
She wasn’t looking for reassurance.
She finally understood why nothing had worked.
And that points to a deeper problem in women’s healthcare — one that isn’t about bad doctors, lack of intelligence, or ill intent.
It’s about how medicine is structured to think.
The Core Issue: Doctors Are Trained to Look in the Wrong Order
Most doctors genuinely want to help women.
The problem is this: medical education is built around isolated systems, not integrated ones.
Training prioritizes:
organs over signaling
pathology over pattern
diagnosis over sequence
So when a woman comes in exhausted, inflamed, anxious, foggy, gaining weight, losing sleep, or losing her cycle, the system does what it was trained to do:
It looks for the fastest label that fits.
And right now, the most convenient umbrella label is:
Perimenopause.
Why Perimenopause Becomes a Catch-All
Yes — hormones change across the lifespan.
Yes — ovarian aging is real.
But what often gets skipped is a foundational question:
What environment are those hormones operating inside?
Instead, the explanation becomes:“This can start as early as 35.”
That statement is technically defensible and functionally misleading.
Because statistically:
true premature ovarian insufficiency affects about 1% of women under 40
even expanded criteria remain a minority
most midlife symptoms precede measurable ovarian failure
Yet women with long-standing stress, metabolic strain, trauma histories, and nervous-system overload are told their symptoms are primarily age-driven.
That’s not precision.
That’s convenience.
Doctors Aren’t Taught Nervous System Literacy
The nervous system doesn’t belong to one specialty.
It crosses:
endocrinology
immunology
psychiatry
gastroenterology
cardiology
gynecology
Which means it often belongs to no one.
There is no single clinical “owner” of nervous system regulation.
So it gets relegated to:
lifestyle advice
stress management handouts
“reduce anxiety” recommendations
But in reality, chronic nervous system dysregulation is not a side issue.
It is upstream of:
insulin resistance
inflammatory load
cortisol dysregulation
suppressed ovulation
altered thyroid signaling
If the body does not perceive safety, reproduction drops down the priority list.
That’s not controversial physiology.
That’s survival biology.
Why Women Feel Gaslit
Gaslighting doesn’t require intent.
It happens when:
lived experience doesn’t fit the explanation
authority insists the framework is complete
context is flattened “for clarity”
Women know — intuitively and viscerally — when their symptoms improve with:
slowing down
stabilizing blood sugar
reducing pressure
increasing safety
nervous system regulation
But when they’re told the cause is simply age or hormones, their internal data gets dismissed.
That creates emptiness — not relief.
Information without coherence doesn’t heal.
It invalidates.
The Inconvenient Stories That Don’t Fit the Model
There are countless stories doctors rarely highlight.
Women with lifelong PCOS who regain cycle regularity in their late 40s or early 50s after metabolic stabilization.
Women whose hot flashes disappear when stress signaling quiets — not when estrogen is increased.
Women whose anxiety resolves before labs change.
These stories are inconvenient because they suggest symptoms weren’t inevitable.
They suggest sequence matters.
And sequence is harder to bill for than labels.
This Isn’t Anti-Medicine — It’s Pro-Accuracy
Doctors work within constraints:
insurance
time limits
siloed systems
protocol-based care
The goal isn’t to villainize them.
The goal is to name the blind spots.
Medicine excels at identifying disease.
It is far less effective at understanding why a system decompensated in the first place.
Women don’t need more labels.
They need better causality.
Why This Matters So Much in Midlife
Midlife doesn’t create dysfunction.
It removes the buffer.
Years of nervous system overload that were previously compensated for stop being tolerable — and symptoms surface.
When doctors mistake amplification for origin, women are told:
“This is just what happens now.”
That framing shuts down curiosity — and possibility.
What Actually Brings Relief
Relief comes when:
nervous system regulation is prioritized
metabolic signaling is stabilized
hormones are addressed in context, not isolation
women are treated as integrated systems, not declining parts
And when women finally hear an explanation that honors their lived experience, they say the same thing over and over:
“That explains everything.”
Not because it’s comforting — but because it’s true.
Doctors don’t get it wrong because they don’t care.
They get it wrong because the model they’re working from is i
ncomplete.
And women deserve more than incomplete truths.
💡 The Bottom Line
Midlife is not the cause of dysfunction; it’s simply the moment the body runs out of buffer.
For too long, women have been offered fragmented care—a diagnosis for one organ, a pill for one symptom,
and the convenient but incomplete explanation of “age” or “hormones.
” Relief is not found in more labels; it is found in recognizing the sequence of events.
When you prioritize metabolic stability and, critically, nervous system safety, you are not treating a decline;
you are restoring the foundation of the entire system.
You do not need to fight your body; you need to understand the environment it’s operating in.
Start with Safety
If this post resonated with you—if you’ve been told your symptoms are normal, but your intuition says otherwise—it’s time to shift your focus upstream.
Instead of chasing isolated systems (ovaries, thyroid, adrenals), start here:
Stop searching for the next protocol. Begin observing the patterns between stress, food, and energy.
Prioritize the Nervous System. Let’s discuss your unique sequence. Book your Free Discovery Call to learn how to identify the root cause of your symptoms, not just manage the labels.
Share this article. Help us move the conversation in women’s healthcare from labeling to causality.