The Dr Louise Newson Podcast - 96 – How India is waking up to hormone health Sanjith Shetty

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

In India, one woman asked her gynaecologist about HRT and was told: "over my dead body." Dr Louise Newson travels to India to meet Sanjith Shetty, founder of the menopause community Miror and one of the country's most vocal male allies for women's hormone health. Sanjith built Miror after studying hundreds of femtech companies and finding that menopause, a phase every woman goes through, had almost no support compared to maternal and menstrual health. His community has since grown to thousands of Indian women openly discussing HRT, and he is now pushing corporates and government to take hormone health seriously.Louise and Sanjith discuss why so many doctors in Indiaremain frightened of prescribing HRT, what it costs women's careers and confidence and the early signs that attitudes among doctors, employers and government are starting to shift.They close with three things Sanjith wants to see happen in the next five years to improve hormone health for women across India.Let’s connect👉 To access hormoneinformation in India, download the Balance app: https://bit.ly/4yZty5A👉 For global clinicianeducation, explore Newson Education: https://bit.ly/4g5V0ps👉 More from Dr LouiseNewson: https://linkin.bio/drlouisenewson

So this is a bit unusual because normally I'm in my podcast studio and you have made your home a studio, Sandh. So just for the listeners, we are in India and very unexpected trip. But I've been working out and sad, actually, how many women are missing out on hormone treatments? So just for context, before we get into that, I met you, or you met me rather, nearly two years ago, and you've been stalking me for a little while. In a good way, huh?

In a good way. But I've been rather busy, and I've been going, yeah, yeah, okay, we'll talk at some stage. And now I've spent a lot of time with you, and I realize that you are genuine and you want to help women. So, thank you. Tell me about who you are. What are you doing with a T-shirt talking about perimenophores and menopause on? So firstly, you know, this logo on my T-shirt is as big as a hoarding, right?

So it's cheaper for me to wear it. It pays for my airfares. So why? Firstly, I've been a big diversity in inclusion champion. Growing up, admittedly, I had more women friends than male. So I could relate to them better. And then when I heard of this term called FemTech, which is where technology can be scale.

to help women. I said, wow. And then when I went into that FEMTEC space, studied some 440 companies, 439 to be exact, and saw the wonderful work happening on menstrual health, around maternal health, everything was maternal, everything was mother and child. But nothing for this phase of a woman's life, which is menopause, a phase that every woman will go through for half of a life, 50 to 804 symptoms, yet zero conversation. And some of these symptoms are fatal. fatal. And I said, you know, something has to be done. I think this space needs a good male ally with good intent. And that's what I am. Great. So you've learned quite a lot about hormones. Thanks to you. Yeah. But I think over the last couple of days since I first, you know, met you in person,

everything I say, you seem to be going, oh my gosh, I'm not sure. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. I didn't know this. So what are the things that you've really learned that you didn't know before? Clearly, that we can actually give hormones to women in their 20s and 30s to help them with PCOS, PCOD, PMS, and also that we can give hormones to older women past 60 because it will help them in bone density, it'll help them with energy, it'll help them with cognitive powers. It'll just help their overall quality of life

so that hormones can actually be given for these two age bands, which I did not know. Which is amazing because you've spent a long time researching, thinking about hormones, you know, and so much time. Yeah. I'm embarrassed, but thank you. No, well, it's interesting because a lot of things that I do, I take for granted and I think that everybody knows.

And, you know, many years ago, I was writing some. information about breast cancer treatments. It was a long, long time ago, way before the internet. It was in 1992. And I realised then that people didn't know what cancer was. They all told me it was death. They didn't understand what it was. And I realise that now about hormones. People don't know what they are. And when you talk about HRT, they just think it's breast cancer and end of conversation. So for me, it's very obvious that hormones are just chemical messengers that we produce in our body. and hormone treatments just replace those hormones. And of course, why would they be associated with risk?

So sometimes it's the simple things that are forgotten. And when they're forgotten, people fill the void. And that's what's happened a lot. And I can see that, you know, in India, people as in women, men, but also healthcare professionals are so scared of HRT. It's almost just been completely forgotten. But there's a lot of suffering over here, isn't there? You know, I'm talking to some of my friends from very affluent circles

whose Gynaks, whose doctors are very, you know, right up there in the learning curve. And one of my friends, when she went and asked her Gynac, can I take H.R.T. The answer she got was over my dead body. It's shocking, isn't it? It's shocking. Now, my friend who has two fantastic babies, thanks to this Gynak, hears this from a person she trusts implicitly. There's no way she's going to have it.

I think that has to change, Dr. Luis, that has to change. You've got to work. I mean, we've got the best doctors in the world. You know, I'm so proud of our doctors from India. I mean, wherever I go in the world, you'll find some Indian doctor in the hospital. But this has to change. and thanks to you because you do a lot of education programs. 37,000 practitioners have been trained through Newsombed, right?

So thank you. Thank you. But there's a lot more that need to be trained. And in fact, we did an event together a couple of days ago, and one lady said she'd started some estrogen and was feeling so much better. Palpitations had improved, her sleep had improved. And then her gynecologist said, you need to stop that. And, of course, she had, and she was feeling well.

worse, wasn't she? And she said, but I don't want to disagree with my gynecologist. So that's really sad because we're now getting to a stage, certainly in the UK, it's happened and maybe it will happen here in India that women know more than their gynaecologist and doctors. Because it's quite basic, simple information. I think it's good. I think it's really good. But a lot of doctors don't. They don't like challenge. And also, a lot of doctors don't like to admit. And also, a lot of doctors don't like to admit that they've got things wrong. So a lot of doctors are quite arrogant and it's the way we've been taught and trained that we don't question. We just do as our senior doctors have told us, our education has taught us. So then to suddenly completely change and say,

no, all the things I've said about hormone treatments are wrong, people don't like to do that. So they either ignore it or like these two gynecologists we're talking about, just push back and say no. But then for that doctor, their life continues. The patient leaves the consulting room and they carry on. But for that patient, the woman we met and your friend, their lives are going to be very different without hormones and it's wrong. Yes, it is. But I think things are changing, Dr. Lewis. I interact with a lot of Gynax and a lot of doctors today who are so passionately helping in hormonal health. And from an absolute no, the answer today is it can be given for those women who are medically qualified to take that.

So at least it's not a no. It's changing. We have, we have, we have, we have, we've walked quite a few steps forward. And doctors here in India, like you doctors in the UK are everywhere in the world, your first priority is your patient. You want the well-being of your patient. Yeah. And if your patient, if you see that this HRT or hormonal therapy or hormonal treatment is really helping that woman, I am sure you would not desist from giving that. You will give it.

So eventually it's the result, right? And that's what you've been telling me for the past two days. It's like forget the theory behind it. Look at what is actually doing to women. Yeah. But it's quite, I mean, you're from a business background. And are you quite shocked with what you're hearing that there's an evidence-based treatment that all guidelines say is first-line treatment for the majority of women,

yet it's been denied for the majority of women? If this was a business, sort of, you were doing something in a big organisation and you were told that you had to do this health and safety policy or you had to do something and everyone ignored it, would you get away with it in the same? No way. Things have to change. Things are changing.

In fact, you know, at Mirror, we have a new corporate outreach where we're going to reach out to a lot of corporates because we have communities, we have doctors, we have supplements, we have an app, we have the HRT Center of Excellence, we're doing very interesting programs. We're reaching out of corporates with the intent that, you know, please, please look into the hormonal health of the thousands or the every woman that you have in their organization because every woman counts, right?

Yeah. And corporates are listening. That's a good thing. Well, I think they need to because women are leaving the workplace all the time. Many years ago, I did some work with the police force, West Midlands Police, and we found that 78% of women were having symptoms affecting their ability to work. and the commonest symptoms were memory problems, anxiety and fatigue. Nothing about hot flushes.

Yet a lot of them were not able to access treatment. So they were retiring early. They were giving up work. I did a survey for some NHS employees and found that 37% of women wanted to give up work but couldn't afford to. So those women are not going to work going, yeah, this is going to be a good work day. They're just sluggishly turning up doing the bare minute. because they've got all these symptoms affecting their ability.

And I'm sure, you know, the same in India. It's interesting looking at some of the jobs, you know, sort of in restaurants I've been to or hotels I've been to. You know, there's a lot more men that are doing jobs that women would be doing in England. And some of that is just a cultural difference. But some of it, I'm sure, is because women can't do the same jobs because they're not taking hormones. They're not feeling as well. And I wonder whether people are leaving their jobs or retiring earlier as well. So, you know, I, so what we've forgotten in India is that today there are a lot of women who have to maybe work.

There are a lot of single mothers out there, right? They have to work. There are widows out there who don't have husbands. And they have to work because they want to give great life for their children. They want to take care of their age parents. So they have to work. And today the ability of the, I mean, the option of not working, I don't think can be entertained. And today, you know, that's what we say in our communities.

Every woman should be financially independent. She should be financially secure. She should be financially knowledgeable. You know, not to say that their husbands are not taking care of them or their partners are not taking care of them, but I think she should be herself just financially smart. And we hear over this data and in fact what we don't have in India is, you know, the research and the data that says so many women have actually dropped up. And that's what we're trying to fix at Mirror also. And, you know, whoever's listening, if they know some good researchers who want to do research on what's happening in the workplace with women going through perimenopause or menopause, if they're dropping off, you want to do research, please reach out to us at Mirror and we will fund that.

Well, it would be really interesting to see how it varies in India compared to UK because we've just done a big survey of women in the workplace and we had a lot of response. But what was really interesting, we found that women who were taking hormone treatments said they're more likely to work and continue their work, they're less likely to go off sick, which I think is the first time anybody's done research in that way.

And it's really important that we don't just think about these poor women, And in England, a lot of people are talking about adjustments for work. So having fans on the desk or changing the temperature of the air conditioning. Now, I told you earlier when I had symptoms, as a doctor, I couldn't remember anything. Like my memory had gone. And so you could give me all the fans you like. It's not going to help. If I had a broken leg, I don't just want a stool to sit on.

I want my leg to be fixed. If your hormones aren't there, you can do. all the support you like, but the most important thing is having medical treatments. And so for corporates and organizations, the more they think about how do these women access treatment, because then they're not spending money on getting new people to come and replace those people that have left their work. And, you know, having a forward-thinking company that are looking at hormone health is really important. I was hearing statistics where they see, say because women are dropping out of the workplace in the UK, millions of, so many millions of

pounds have been spent on getting them, you know, on training them all these decades and suddenly they're not there when they're most needed. So it's not good for the economy. It's totally awful for the economy. And then, you know, if you look at hormone health throughout the ages as well, there's a lot of younger people with PMDD who, you know, if you could say, well, it's, you know, it's just a few days a month, they're struggling with symptoms. But then if it's three days a month, you've got 12 months in a year, that's 36 days, a year that they really can't perform as well. And a lot of women just tell me that they have a, you know, they stay at home, they have more time off sick,

then their period comes and they feel well and they carry on. But they're avoiding going for promotion. They're avoiding doing more training because they know they can't do it. so they're choosing roles that, you know, inferior to what they could be doing. They're not living up to their true potential. It's sad and this has to change. And we're changing it. It's a changing, thanks to you.

Yeah, well, there's a lot. But how do you feel like we can get through to women in India because, you know, it's such a massive country. Like it's overwhelming how big it is. Your population is huge. How do women get most of their information, do you think? So, you know, coming from India, I'm in the crowd, right? So I don't think we are that big, right?

So the numbers don't scare me, right? And doesn't scare my team. In fact, we love it. We love it. There are so many millions of women that we can help, right? Because we can get scale in India. So how? So that's why we started our community.

It was all about awareness, right? And we used, you know, people started, we didn't. mass advertise, right? We just told women, if you like what we're doing, please tell two other women or tell one other person. And that's what happened. We grew with three, you know, in the

first month, and we are over 2,000 women, right? We have thousands talking every day, which is nothing. Of course, my social media has close to a lack followers, but on my online communities, it's still not there. So, we are also

trying to see how to improve the spread of our message. Do we need influencers? Do we need people who women look up to? Could be sports women, could be politicians, could be movie stars. You know, someone who musicians, whoever people look up to, I think we need everyone's help. Because India still, you know, we look up to our icons, right? And if the icon says this is very good.

And it's happening already. I see so many celebrities just talking about hormonal health now and how, you know, what happened to them and how they put on weight, how they fought back and they got their muscle mass and stuff. So I know so many people who are so willing to do that. And I think it has to be a, there's not one magic recipe here. It has to be a combination of so many things.

But do you think people are accepting the conversations in India in ways that they perhaps didn't before? Very much so. Very much so. In my own community, because women asked for it, we have a subgroup on HRT, which is like coming from women. So women wanted that. Women wanted that. They said, listen, we want HRT focused information. We want articles around the world which are talking about, you know, why HRT is safe.

why it's good for us and how we can improve. So women are asking for it and it should be and it's a very healthy sign and another beautiful thing that's happening in our communities are women are just talking about sometimes I would say embarrassing things, right? That's good. They're just openly just talking about it.

And I think that says something about their courage. Yeah. That says something about their strength. That says something about them trusting us also. So I take it as a compliment. You have a long way to go. But Dr. Newsom, you know the intent is to just keep on plowing on and getting more and more women. And I feel, you know, because you're blessed with such good testimonials, right?

Because you were just telling me this afternoon how you had this woman who was just, you know, saying, you know, she feels like gold is running in her, in her way, right? Like she was feeling so good, you know, thanks to hormones. And we need such testimonies. We need such testimonials and it'll happen, it'll happen. You know, we've already started, quite a few women are already in HRT with our program. And, you know, with good collaborations, you know, getting our learning curve up. Hopefully we will work with you.

And if, you know, you know how to do it. Yeah, because somehow I feel in India, I might be wrong, this is just an observation that women are close to communities. In England, we're not as close as we used to be. Our families aren't as close. We're more fragmented. Often we don't even live near our families. So I feel that there's bigger opportunity for women to share and educate each other. In India, right?

In India. I love it. That's happening. You know, it's just not among, just in India. Yeah. But you must understand Indians are very close to their family overseas. And we have such huge populations of Indian women and women from South Asia in Dubai, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in the US, in Canada, in England, you know,

so they're all sharing with their family members and if they're feeling good, they're also saying that. If they're not feeling good, they're sharing that. Which is really important because I think that is one of the ways it's going to change and, you know, you providing a platform to have a community over here is vitally important because there's been a lot of confusion because people have been given often misinformation, which makes it really difficult. And certainly in the UK, you know, I don't work with any pharmaceutical companies at all. My work's very impartial, but there are a lot of people who are trying to push certain drugs or treatments

or they don't have the right knowledge. You know, I have a wealth of clinical experience that a lot of people don't have. So you sometimes hear doctors talking and they're... they don't understand how really how to treat women properly. Do you think that's the same in India? So, you know, we are still at our infancy, right? We are still, we've just started. So we have actually researched what is available here.

We, you know, we have quite a lot of estrogen, progesterone and some testosterone available here. I think we could do much better. I appeal to the government of India to really, you know, open it up, to get more of these products in. I also learned from you about this very interesting world of compounded HRT, which is bio and body identical and not synthetic. You know, clearly understood the difference. And, you know, we should try and fix that, you know, because I think, first of all, HRT is so inexpensive. You know, when I heard those numbers, this is something for all Indians, you know. It's something, and I'm telling you, I feel our government are very, very pro-women, you know.

Women come and vote in numbers, and the government realizes that, and they feel that they should. I mean, you see all the manifestos of parties that have won in the recent past, huge, huge, you know, benefits for women. And I'm telling you it's not far. The day is not far. When, when various political parties start helping women in menopause and perimenopause.

In fact, I know of a couple of states. I know Maharashtra has started perimenopause menopause clinics. And if one state starts it, trust me, the others will also follow. Not because that they want to copy, because they also want to do what is right for the women in their state. Yeah, which is so important, you know, if I had a governmental position, it's an easy win, isn't it, to help 51% of the population, because if you're helping women, you're helping indirectly men too. We're just assuming they're men, but there are many women politicians also.

But the male politicians all have very dominant women in their homes, right? So, you know, so they are like winning major brownie points in their house. So it's going to happen. Dr. Luis, it's going to happen. It's just that. That's why I tell my team, just be. focused. You know, let's not show bravado. Let's survive. And whoever survives, I think, will thrive. Well, it's a big opportunity to make India, the world, healthier. And, you know,

women have been suffering for too long. And it's, we can't keep waiting for change because it's really not fair. There's no other medical guideline that is ignored, like one about menopause and perimenopause. If, you know, I wouldn't allow my patients to have an underactive thyroid gland and not give them phyroxin and just watch them put on weight and become lethargic. And somehow

it's allowed and it feels wrong. Unacceptable. So the more that we have voices in other corners of the world, the better. And I'm very grateful for the work that you're doing and I met your team today, you know, it's brilliant. But Dr. Mason, you must understand

it's people like you who inspire us, you know, because you show us what is medically right. You show us what is scientifically backed. And, you know, we get so much more confidence when we know what we're doing is medically right. Because, you know, this is not about money. We're all, you know, none of us are making money here. It's all about doing the right thing, right? You know, at least we are impacting so many women. And by doing something right.

So I'm just playing my part. Thank you so much. No. I have to, big, big, you know, dead to you. Well, no, it's great. It's wonderful to be here. It's not so wonderful witnessing the suffering, but it's great to think things are changing.

We will change it. You know, and I'm, I always, you know, we Indians always are very hopeful. Because, you know, that's how we are, that's how we do so well, wherever we go. Because we don't let circumstances hold us down. We always are positive in our outlook and we say there's so much more to be done. And we are spiritual, right?

We believe like we are karma. So whatever we do for the outside world, it comes back to help us. Absolutely. And we believe we have been put here for a reason. I'm here for a reason. You're here for a reason. And we're talking today for a reason, right? Absolutely.

Whatever happens tomorrow happens for a reason. Yeah. So before I end, I always ask for three take-home tips. So three things that you would like to happen in the next, I was going to say 10, but I'm going to say next five years to improve the hormone health of women in India. First is we have a very good collab with the Newson Empire. Second is women really don't have to be told about joining communities.

Che just join in millions. because it's such a great network for them. It's free. They have companionship. They offload what's there in their minds. They get great guidance, medically backed guidance. They seek medical help. And finally, you know, the medical community, the doctors and the women and the government and us.

we all work together to solve a common problem. I believe we need allies from various quarters. I'm just one. I'm a male ally. We need allies among doctors. We need which there are so many, thanks to you. We need allies among the government. We need allies among policymakers.

You know, we need allies among, you know, how to get HRT, you know, inexpensive. We need those manufacturers, right? and it'll happen. It will happen. It will happen. I'm so hopeful of it. Well, I love your positivity. Let's see what happens. Thank you so much. We live with hope, Dr. Louise. Yes, very good. And thank you for let me host my podcast here. Oh, please. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. Thank you.