Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause

In this lukewarm debut guide, actor Watts offers familiar advice on navigating menopause. Her lack of medical expertise hampers discussions of the biology of menopause and how to treat symptoms. For instance, her explanation of how “hormone fluctuation” induces hot flashes is rudimentary, and the suggestion to place an ice pack on one’s neck for relief is unsurprising. A chapter on nutrition recommends intermittent fasting and probiotics but warns against the keto diet, whose restrictions on carbs rule out even such beneficiary fiber sources as legumes, but there’s little discussion of how these dietary choices affect menopausal women, specifically. Watts is at her best when drawing on her own experiences to capture the complicated emotions that accompany menopause, as when she shares how ashamed she felt about having perimenopausal symptoms in her mid-30s. Elsewhere, she reveals how her struggles to conceive because of her early symptoms induced guilt over her imagined mistreatment of her own body, and she offers an enraging account of how male doctors repeatedly dismissed her concerns because of her relatively young age. Though the more personal passages will be a balm to menopausal women looking for affirmation that they’re not alone, the guidance leaves much to be desired. Readers would be better off with Mary Claire Haver’s The New Menopause. Agent: Cait Hoyt, Creative Artists Agency. (Jan.)