Five years ago, Tara Wider, a 54-year-old from Lindenhurst, began posting on social media about holistic beauty and women’s wellness. Over time, she built a community of midlife women who share her interests in healthy aging, fitness, nutrition, and self-care. Her algorithm learned to feed her content from like-minded peers, which is both a blessing and a curse. Because her feed is so carefully curated around menopause and perimenopause, she is constantly scrolling past influencers selling products, diets, or workout plans that promise to fix hot flashes, sleep trouble, weight gain, and mood swings. Sometimes those posts make bold claims with very little science behind them. Wider often finds herself pausing and thinking, “What did that person just say?” It’s a familiar feeling for many women in this stage of life who are looking for answers and instead find thirty-second videos that sound more like infomercials than medical advice. According to the CDC, menopause happens around age 52 on average in the United States, and healthcare providers tell Newsday they have noticed a real increase in patients asking about items they first saw on Instagram or TikTok. The trend is understandable: midlife women are eager for relief, and social media offers a constant stream of possible solutions. But not every solution is legitimate. Silvia Tuthill, a nurse practitioner who owns Tenth Avenue Aesthetics in East Northport and Islip, warns that women should be mindful of influencers and the biases they may carry. As she puts it, “People are being paid for their opinions, as well as advertisement. Sometimes, it can be predatory.” That warning is backed by a Pew Research Center analysis of more than 535,000 posts from 6,334 health and wellness influencers. One-third of those influencers promoted a product or service in most of their posts, and nearly half of the posts that discussed health topics directly included a sponsorship or encouraged followers to use a product. In other words, what often looks like friendly advice is actually a commercial, and women in menopause are a prized audience.
The biggest area of misinformation, according to Dr. Stephanie Trentacoste McNally of Northwell Health, is supplements. McNally directs ob-gyn services for the Katz Institute for Women’s Health and leads its menopause and midlife medicine program. She has seen Instagram creators recommend things like magnesium glycinate to help with sleep disruption, which is a common menopause symptom. But even if that supplement has a sedative effect, it is not right for everyone. McNally urges women to talk to their clinical teams before taking advice from someone online. She explains that supplements have “taken on a world of their own because women are desperate” for answers, but they are not held to the gold standard of medicine: a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial with enough women to compare the supplement against a placebo. New supplements are hitting the market so rapidly that research simply cannot keep up. And a label that says “natural” does not mean it is safe. Tuthill points out that menopause symptoms like skin changes, weight fluctuation, vaginal dryness, and hot flashes need different assessments and treatments, not one catchall pill. More is not necessarily better either; the body can only absorb so many vitamins and supplements, and the long-term impact may be minimal. Dr. Meredith Vandegrift, a plastic surgeon in Huntington who mostly works with menopausal women, notes that there is an overabundance of supplements marketed to this group, but very little evidence backing the claims. People can present themselves online as experts in whatever they want, she says, but you never really know what their credentials are. Shelbi Thurau, a registered dietitian for Redefine Fitness in Stony Brook and Mount Sinai, takes a practical approach: before reaching for a supplement, look at your diet and lifestyle first. Sometimes the things you are taking are completely unnecessary once you address your eating habits through actual food. That gentle message can get lost on social media, where supplements are often designed to sound easier than changing your routine. But experts agree that the supplement aisle—or the sponsored link in an influencer’s bio—is no substitute for personalized guidance.
Nutrition is another place where misinformation runs wild, and it has real consequences for women in menopause. Angela Houlie, a registered dietitian in Centerport who runs My Fruitful Body Nutrition, sees plenty of harmful advice online, especially recommendations to cut carbs and minimize calories. Those tips might work for a younger body, but they can hurt a woman going through menopause. Instead, Houlie says, women should eat carbs from whole foods like sweet potatoes and beans, which fuel workouts and boost energy. Protein also becomes especially important after age thirty-five, because the risk of losing muscle mass increases. Amanda Leal, chief operating officer of Redefine Fitness, has watched online coaches advocate for low-fat diets, but that approach “works great if you’re not in perimenopause or menopause.” Lower fats wreak havoc on hormones. Incorporating healthy fats and omega-3s is essential during this transition. “Having a little higher fats in the diet for women going through those stages in life is actually OK,” she says. On social media, a specific diet often gets presented as the one true answer, but Thurau reminds women that what works for one person is not going to work for everyone. She recommends prioritizing things that fight inflammation: fruits, vegetables, fiber, and proteins. She also tells people to pay attention to how they feel in their daily lives—how they sleep, how anxious they are, how they handle caffeine, sugar, or alcohol. All of those can affect mood and overall well-being. The Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, fatty fish, and whole grains, seems to offer the best overall benefits, according to McNally. But Thurau makes an even broader point: “Stress is the worst ingredient.” Treating the whole person—your mental health, your lifestyle, your stress levels—is essential when you want results and motivation that last. That is why experts keep encouraging women to work with a dietitian who can look at their personal eating habits and create a plan, instead of following whatever is trending. Tara Wider’s own journey illustrates this perfectly. Social media initially sparked her curiosity. Through Instagram, Facebook, and podcasts, she learned more and more about what she should be doing as a midlife woman, and that made her want to learn even more. But it also pushed her to seek out a real dietitian, someone she now sees regularly, who can give her advice tailored to her actual life.
Exercise is another area where the messaging can be confusing and even discouraging. A common misconception, Leal says, is that the workout routine you had in your twenties—often focused entirely on cardio—will keep working once you are older. That kind of routine stresses the body out and can make everything ten times worse. The shift, she explains, should be to resistance training that builds muscle, like squats, hip hinges, rowing, and weight lifting with gradually increasing intensity. Lifting weights three times a week is the gold standard. This approach keeps the body steady and happy by growing muscle instead of stressing it out. For cardio, Leal suggests getting your steps in throughout the day, even if that means parking farther away, walking around a mall, or taking laps while grocery shopping. The key is movement sprinkled through the day rather than one giant chunk of exercise followed by hours of sitting. It is also important to monitor your heart rate and avoid pushing too hard. This kind of balanced fitness routine is one of the proven ways to ease menopause symptoms, according to McNally. She calls strength training, cardio, and balance the fitness triangle that women need in the menopausal transition. Her advice is to invest time and energy in things that have been proven to work, rather than in supplements we still know very little about. It is tempting to look for a shortcut, especially when menopause symptoms are making you miserable, but the experts are unanimous: real movement, built around your changing body, will do more for you than any pill or powder you find in your feed.
When it comes to peptides, the internet is especially full of hype. Two injectable peptides, sermorelin and BPC-157, have been widely discussed online as possible treatments for menopause symptoms. Influencers claim sermorelin can build muscle and boost energy, while BPC-157 is promoted for gut problems and general pain. But McNally cautions that these peptides have not gone through randomized trials, are not regulated, and have not been specifically linked to menopause treatment by experts. Harvard Medical School defines peptides as short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Some peptides occur naturally in the body, while others are made in a lab and used in medications. GLP-1 medications, for example, are a type of peptide that has been well studied and can be helpful for diabetes treatment and for metabolic and cardiovascular changes that are more common during the menopausal transition. But other peptides have not been FDA regulated or widely studied at all. Tuthill warns there is an added risk when women buy peptides through third parties, such as online storefronts, because you cannot really know whether the product is actually the active drug when it has not been tested under proper standards. Vandegrift is particularly concerned about how easy it is to get these products online. There is no regulation, she points out, and something you inject into your body probably has a higher potential for side effects than something you put on your skin. Many women are so desperate to feel better that they are willing to try anything, and that vulnerability makes them targets. McNally believes clinicians have a responsibility to share what is uncertain with patients who ask about peptides. The guidelines could change in the future, and research may eventually catch up with the hype. For now, though, she advises women to consult their physicians and to do their own research on reputable sites like The Menopause Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The internet can be a lifeline, but it is also a minefield. It has connected women like Tara Wider to communities that make them feel seen and supported at a time when menopause can feel isolating. It has also introduced them to all kinds of so-called cures that have no medical backing. The key, as Wider sees it, is to be mindful and responsible. She is building her own following now, and she knows that people will listen to what she says. That is why she cautions anyone starting out on social media to be aware of the effect they can have and to make sure they know what they say are actual facts. “You have such a great responsibility,” she says. That responsibility cuts both ways. Followers also need to remember that a pretty feed and a confident voice do not make someone a doctor. The best approach for any midlife woman scrolling through menopause content is to slow down, question the source, and bring the information to a qualified healthcare provider before changing anything. Real wellness in menopause is not about finding a magic product in a sixty-second video. It is about building a foundation of good nutrition, sensible exercise, honest medical guidance, and a supportive community. If social media can help women find that—and if it can point them toward experts who will take their concerns seriously—then it is doing something right. But when it sells fear, quick fixes, and unregulated products to a vulnerable audience, it is doing real harm. Tara Wider found community and inspiration in her feed, but she also found a dietitian, and she continues to learn how to separate what is useful from what is merely noisy. That is the balancing act this generation of midlife women is learning to navigate, one scroll at a time.