Here’s how women in Singapore can finally get the help they need for menopause

Ms Joyce Chung was walking her four-year-old daughter to pre-school one morning in 2020 when the girl turned to her and said: “Mama, you haven’t scolded me yet.”

“I was speechless, but her sentence was so powerful. I felt like there was something wrong because my temperament used to be calmer,” the 49-year-old recalls. She realised she had been snapping at her two young children. Her kids are now seven and nine.

She initially dismissed these incidents as her being over-caffeinated or stressed about her then new bakery business, Guilt Free Food, which was deluged with orders after going viral.

But something had felt amiss since 2019, when she moved back to Singapore after being retrenched from a tech marketing job in Hong Kong. Besides erratic periods and mood swings, her hair had started falling out.

It took Ms Chung five years to find an answer.

In 2023, she chanced upon a book titled The Hormone Fix: Burn Fat Naturally, Boost Energy, Sleep Better, And Stop Hot Flashes, The Keto-Green Way by American gynaecologist and obstetrician Anna Cabeca.

It helped her realise she was in perimenopause, the phase leading up to menopause, when a woman’s periods stop. Perimenopause, which can last up to a decade, is often marked by symptoms such as joint pain, hot flushes, night sweats and brain fog.

On average, women in Singapore hit menopause at age 49.

Ms Chung tried practising mindfulness to regulate her emotions, and cut down on sugar, which helped with mood swings.

A year later, she made an appointment with KK Menopause Centre by KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) to explore possible menopause hormone treatment – MHT is the new name for HRT (hormone replacement therapy). She is now seeking the centre’s help with frozen shoulder, another possible perimenopause symptom.

“Menopause is such a prominent life stage, but there’s not enough awareness and publicity about it compared with pregnancy and motherhood. I noticed that people started talking about it only around the end of last year, and many of my friends are still clueless,” she says.

Better medical care for menopause

As Ms Chung observes, the stigma around perimenopause and menopause is slowly but surely lifting.

A host of new services and support avenues have sprung up since The Straits Times documented in January 2024 the impending wave of menopausal women in a superageing society, where one in four citizens will be aged 65 and older by 2030.

According to United Nations’ figures, more than 1.1 billion women, who represent one in five of the global workforce, will be menopausal in 2025.

Hospitals here, like National University Hospital (NUH) and KKH, which see large numbers of menopausal patients, are building menopause-focused services.

NUH is set to launch a dedicated service to provide holistic care soon, says Professor Yong Eu Leong, head and emeritus consultant of its Division of Benign Gynaecology at the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. He also leads the Integrated Women’s Health Programme, a longitudinal study on menopausal health that began in 2014.

Patients can expect customised management plans that address commonly overlooked menopausal symptoms such as joint pain and muscle aches, poor sleep, anxiety, weight gain and poor mental well-being, he says.

At the clinic, women will be able to seek help from specialists on menopausal care, weight management and related health issues, including hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol.

“This multidisciplinary team will bring the latest evidence-based, state-of-the-art interventions to help women sail through this challenging period, so they can continue to be in charge of their lives and be the pillars of their families, professions and society as before,” Prof Yong says.

KK Menopause Centre has seen a gradual increase in patients since it opened two years ago, with 60 to 70 new cases a month since May, says Associate Professor Rukshini Puvanendran, its co-director, who is also head of and senior consultant in KKH’s Family Medicine Service.

She expects the number to rise in line with increasing awareness and Singapore’s ageing population.

“KK Menopause Centre has helped shift the conversation around menopause awareness among both the public and healthcare providers. Our multidisciplinary approach has highlighted that menopause affects the entire body – from brain function to bone health, skin and emotional well-being – and not just reproductive health,” she says.

In June, the centre launched Singapore’s first Menopause After Cancer Clinic in collaboration with KKH’s gynaecological oncology team.

“This clinic addresses the unique needs of cancer survivors, which are particularly important given rising cancer rates. Cancer survivors often experience more severe menopause symptoms and may face early menopause due to cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy,” says Prof Rukshini.

Drawing on clinical observations that patients need psychosocial support, KK Menopause Centre collaborated with KKH psychiatrists and clinical psychologists to offer more comprehensive care for mood changes and sleep disturbances.

The centre’s Menopause Interest Group has expanded significantly with more members and activities, Prof Rukshini adds.

KK Menopause Centre will host its annual menopause public forum on Oct 18, and is holding talks at workplaces to help employers and employees understand menopause and create better support systems.

More seeking menopause help

More midlife women are also seeking perimenopause and menopause support from complementary health practitioners.

Ms Beatrice Liu, co-founder and chief executive of Oriental Remedies Group, says her traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) health tech business sees up to 100 women with menopause-related issues across its five clinics.

Patients have been getting younger – typically in their early 40s now, compared with 48 to 55 years old three years ago – as women proactively seek advice on symptoms such as irregular menstruation, brain fog and weight gain.

“They tend to bring their blood tests reports, sometimes even before they experience full symptoms. This could be related to better knowledge of perimenopause,” Ms Liu says.

Similarly, physician Huang Wen Ru from Shang TCM, which has three branches islandwide, has observed a 20 per cent increase in the number of women seeking help for perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms over the last few years.

“After the pandemic, patients became more focused on improving their vitality and immune resilience. This meant they no longer ignored symptoms like fatigue, insomnia and mood swings, and instead viewed these as legitimate health concerns requiring proactive management,” she says.

Each month, chiropractic practice Dr Chiro founder Nicholas Lim sees four to five new cases of women seeking help for perimenopause and menopause symptoms, up from two to three in 2021.

Their top concerns are joint and muscle pain, sleep and fatigue issues, as well as weight gain or bloating. Most are professionals aged 42 to 58, although he says more women in their late 30s to early 40s have come with early perimenopausal symptoms.

He has collaborated with partners to offer a personalised Women’s Longevity & Hormone Balance Programme. It includes chiropractic adjustments, alignment and mobility plans, as well as a body recomposition programme and metabolic assessments.

As women may consult different medical and wellness practitioners who do not communicate with one another, some providers are looking to bridge the holistic health gap, such as Hey Taylor, which seeks to be Singapore’s first hybrid women’s health clinic and platform.

It launched in 2024 with online care and mobile clinics, and opened a clinic in Robinson Road in April. On its eponymous app, patients can book appointments, track their periods and get alerts for abnormal health symptoms.

Women in midlife can opt for a customised menopause care plan, which is anchored by a women’s health doctor and may include consultations with a trainer, dietitian, physiotherapist and TCM practitioner. A care advocate checks in regularly, coordinates updates and ensures providers cater to the patient’s evolving needs.

Hey Taylor charges $74.10 for a consultation. Fees for other services vary according to what the patient chooses. The clinic will also work with a patient’s existing wellness providers.

“Before coming to us, many women shared that they were already seeing physiotherapists, dietitians or TCM practitioners. Yet, they often felt like the project manager of their health, trying to make sense of conflicting advice,” says Ms Eve Lee, its co-founder and chief executive.

She says about 70 per cent of its eligible patients have opted for the customised menopause care plan, although not all go the MHT route.

One patient, who had been struggling with poor sleep, joint pain, weight gain and anxiety attacks for about 1½ years without a doctor connecting the dots, found respite with MHT and started sessions with a trainer experienced in midlife physiology to rebuild strength.

Another chose non-hormonal medication for hot flushes, started pelvic floor therapy and saw a dietitian for nutrition support.

“She had stopped running because of stress urinary incontinence, but with aligned care and physiotherapy, she’s beginning to regain the confidence to exercise again,” Ms Lee says.

Hey Taylor also held a mobile women’s clinic for perimenopause and menopause on Aug 30. About 50 women came in for tests and consultations that Saturday afternoon, a time when most clinics are closed.

“Many told us they had been feeling unlike themselves for months, sometimes years, but never realised these were signs of menopause until they spoke to our team. Some had seen multiple doctors without getting a clear answer, and said they finally felt like help was within reach,” Ms Lee says.

“That’s why we plan to continue bringing our mobile clinics into neighbourhoods and workplaces. Meeting women where they are often makes the difference between delaying care and finally getting answers.”

Start-ups offer services and support

A number of femtech start-ups focusing on menopause have launched in the last two years, giving midlife women more avenues for resources and support.

Surety Singapore, run by Gen Zs Valery Tan, 28, and Elmer Yap, 27, grabbed headlines by organising Singapore’s first Menopause Festival in November 2024.

Since that sold-out event, which attracted 150 participants, Surety has organised four Pause & Sip events from May to September that saw between 15 and 40 participants each time.

The free monthly events, headlined by a doctor or allied professional, aim to create a safe space for women to talk and connect. Topics have included mental health, bone health and hormonal health.

Besides its WhatsApp chat group, which has almost 100 members, Surety took over the Menopause Support Singapore group on Facebook in July after its previous administrator left the country. The closed group has more than 780 members and allows for anonymous posts, which Ms Tan says encourages women to share more.

The duo, who also run corporate awareness and education programmes, are now busy with their Midlife Festival on Oct 24 and 25. The two-day event – with early-bird tickets priced from $73.40 until Oct 20 – in town features topics on wellness in the workplace and midlife health for both women and men.

Ms Tan says, following feedback, Surety has broadened the festival’s scope to include midlife topics that appeal to men as well. She expects an audience of 300 for the 2025 event and plans to launch a similar one in Kuala Lumpur in 2026.

Ms Grace Oh, a South Korean based in Singapore, started out sharing practical, evidence-based information on menopause online in 2020, after experiencing perimenopausal symptoms and years of seeing how women’s health concerns were often belittled by medical professionals.

In 2024, two years after she moved here from Hong Kong, she rebranded her YouTube channel and website into Sol.

Short for Spring of Life, Sol aims to be an app, platform and community for women in Asia, where women are especially prone to being misunderstood and ignored during midlife, says Ms Oh, who declines to reveal her age. The Sol app has just launched on Apple’s App Store and an Android version will be released soon.

Sol’s first annual conference, Flash Forward, held in April, attracted almost 200 registrants and featured 39 speakers across keynote addresses, panels and flash networking sessions where women could speak directly to experts.

Dr Loh Foo Hoe, past president of the Menopause Research Society (Singapore), and Dr Chua Yang, past president of the Asia-Pacific Menopause Federation, were among the key speakers.

Sol has also organised Flash Connect events every month since June. The free sessions feature experts who facilitate open conversations or lead an activity and typically attract 12 to 17 participants. Its next one is on Nov 14 with British clinical psychologist Emma Waddington on mental health in midlife.

At one of the sessions, Ms Oh recalls a woman saying she finally felt normal after years of being told she was “too young” for perimenopause. Another participant nodded and said: “That was me too.”

“Within minutes, they were swopping stories. It reminded me that beyond science and technology, women simply need safe, understanding spaces to be heard, and that’s what Sol is building,” she adds.

Reframing menopause in the workplace

While Surety and Sol hold regular consumer activities, workplaces in Asia are the focus of HeyVenus Integrated Healthscience. It is helmed by former human resources (HR) and business transformation expert Christina Ang, in her early 50s, who saw up close how working women struggled in the workplace during midlife.

“Even with access to healthcare, the experience was confusing and isolating,” she says of her perimenopause journey.

In March, HeyVenus and the NUS Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (ACRLE) at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine launched a ground-breaking white paper that revealed the economic cost of ignoring menopause at work.

Two in three working women in the Asia-Pacific region aged 45 and up said menopause symptoms disrupted their professional and personal lives, while almost seven in 10 Singapore-based female respondents had experienced at least two menopause-related symptoms which interfered with their jobs and reduced their quality of life.

The white paper polled 1,741 working women and managers aged 20 to 60 across five countries, and a quarter of the respondents were from Singapore.

HeyVenus and ACRLE followed this with a by-invitation-only event in April, Menopause & The Bottom Line, which brought together over 80 senior leaders from the private and public sectors.

“Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Many said it was the first time menopause had been framed as a leadership and economic issue, not just a personal one. Working with NUS Medicine, we showed how menopause affects productivity, retention and healthcare costs, sparking conversations about how organisations can respond,” Ms Ang says.

Besides existing one-to-one health coaching that its clients’ employees can sign up for, HeyVenus plans to launch AI-powered workplace and personal health tools that help women take care of their well-being at work and in everyday life.

“We want to make menopause support accessible and relatable, blending medical expertise, technology and cultural relevance to give every woman the confidence and tools to take charge of her health,” adds Ms Ang.

Zora Health, a two-year-old femtech start-up known for its fertility care resources, also offers menopause-related content and support.

Founder and chief executive Anna Haotanto, 40, says she started it partly because she thought she was going through perimenopause at the time and wanted to provide evidence-based and culturally relevant support to women and couples through different life stages.

In late 2024, it launched its Zora Menopause Reset online course with 22 lessons, which costs $49 for 12 months of access. The content is fact-checked with medical journals and research, says Ms Haotanto. Over 100 women, mostly based in Singapore, have taken it.

“A user messaged us that she cried halfway through the perimenopause lesson because she realised she wasn’t ‘going crazy’. Another said that after taking our Menopause Reset course, she brought her husband into the discussion so he would understand what she was going through. Many women I spoke to mentioned that they wanted to understand their symptoms first instead of jumping straight to MHT,” Ms Haotanto says.

Women seeking non-medical guidance can book a 30-minute Menopause Clarity Call for $29 with a care navigator, who can direct them to relevant professionals.

Zora also created the @menopauseasia Instagram account in March to reach out to younger women who may not realise how early in life perimenopause symptoms can start. It has over 1,600 followers.

Ms Haotanto, a Singaporean, is planning to launch a Menopause At Work corporate programme across Singapore and Indonesia in the first quarter of 2026. This will include workshops, e-learning modules and practical toolkits for HR teams.

While awareness of the menopause transition has improved and the menopause space is filling up with exciting new initiatives, Prof Rukshini acknowledges that much remains to be done.

“We know that on the ground, most obstetricians and family physicians are not confident in managing patients on MHT. This stems largely from outdated safety concerns about MHT, based on a flawed study from 30 years ago,” she says.

Recent evidence, however, supports MHT’s safety and effectiveness for most healthy women under 60 within 10 years of menopause, and the United States’ Food and Drug Administration is expected to update these warnings soon, she adds.

“KKH is working to standardise menopause care practices in Singapore, including MHT use,” Prof Rukshini says.

Ms Haotanto adds: “The challenge isn’t only medical, but also awareness and language. Women don’t have the vocabulary to describe what they’re experiencing and most of us aren’t trained to connect the dots early.

“Menopause support is about helping women to stay healthy, productive and confident in the prime of their careers. When we start seeing it that way, society changes.”

This article was originally published in The Straits Times.