9 Women Changing the Conversation About Female Hormones

Why a Reading List

The women's biohacking and hormone optimization conversation in 2026 is not a single monolithic field. It is a set of adjacent communities — menopause medicine, functional medicine, sports performance, longevity, sexual medicine, and hormone optimization — each with its own leading voices, evidence standards, and stylistic conventions.

This reading list names the clinicians, researchers, and communicators who are most actively shaping the public conversation in 2026. Inclusion here is not an endorsement of every claim any of these figures has made, nor is it a claim that they endorse any specific product or platform. It is a navigational tool for readers who want to understand where the conversation is happening and who is driving it.

The selection criteria: each person on this list is (a) a credentialed clinician or researcher, (b) produces publicly accessible work (books, podcasts, papers, or regular public communication), and (c) is frequently cited by other voices in the field. The list is not exhaustive — women's biohacking is a large conversation and no list of ten names can be complete. We have tried to pick voices that represent the range of the field rather than a single corner of it.

Dr. Mary Claire Haver

Mary Claire Haver, MD is a board-certified OB/GYN and Certified Menopause Practitioner (through The Menopause Society / NAMS). She has become one of the most publicly visible voices in menopause medicine, primarily through her book The New Menopause (2024) and an active social-media and podcast presence.

Core thesis. Midlife women have been systematically underserved by mainstream gynecology, particularly on the question of menopause symptom management. Hormone therapy has been under-prescribed because of a mis-reading of the Women's Health Initiative data. A generation of women has been dismissed or medicated inappropriately for symptoms that have effective treatments. Her clinical focus includes hormone therapy, nutritional approaches, and a specific attention to the cardiometabolic changes of menopause.

Where to find her work. The New Menopause (Rodale, 2024) is the main written work. Podcast appearances across the menopause-health media ecosystem. Social media presence primarily on Instagram (@drmaryclaire) and related platforms.

Why she matters to this conversation. Haver represents the clinical-care-model voice at its most publicly accessible. She works within the NAMS/Menopause Society framework but is outspoken about gaps in mainstream gynecology training. Her reach has meaningfully shifted public awareness of menopause as a treatable medical issue. Readers oriented toward the clinical-care model will find her framing most congruent.

Dr. Sara Szal (formerly Gottfried)

Sara Szal, MD (who published under the name Gottfried through much of her career) is a Harvard-trained physician specializing in precision, integrative, and functional medicine. She has been writing and publishing in the women's hormone health space for more than a decade.

Core thesis. Women's hormones are a whole-system problem — not a pick-one-hormone-and-replace-it exercise. Her work integrates endocrine, nutritional, psychological, and lifestyle factors, and explicitly treats trauma as something that shapes how women's bodies regulate themselves. She has written extensively on both perimenopause/menopause and on the interaction of hormones with stress, sleep, and metabolic health.

Where to find her work. Multiple books including The Hormone Cure (2013), Younger (2017), Women, Food, and Hormones (2021), and The Autoimmune Cure (2024). Podcast interviews widely available; personal podcast and substack presence.

Why she matters. Szal bridges the clinical-care and functional/biohacker frames. She is credentialed in mainstream medicine but writes in a voice and frame that is closer to the biohacker/optimization audience than most NAMS-certified clinicians. Readers who want integrative depth that goes beyond standard HRT prescribing generally find her work productive.

Dr. Felice Gersh

Felice Gersh, MD is a board-certified OB/GYN and Integrative Medicine physician. She has written and spoken extensively on PCOS, estrogen's systemic role, circadian biology, and women's cardiometabolic health.

Core thesis. Estrogen is a systemic hormone, not merely a reproductive hormone, and its loss in menopause affects essentially every tissue in the body. Her work connects women's hormonal changes to cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, and cognitive outcomes. She is a strong advocate for starting hormone therapy at the right time as a way to prevent disease, not just manage symptoms.

Where to find her work. PCOS SOS (2019), Menopause: 50 Things You Need to Know (2021), and Menopause: 50 Things You Need to Know About Your Cardiovascular Health (2024). Podcast appearances widely available across integrative and longevity channels.

Why she matters. Gersh is one of the most outspoken clinicians on the systemic consequences of estrogen loss and the case for appropriately-selected hormone therapy. Her framing is more assertive than most NAMS-aligned voices but remains grounded in published research.

Dr. Peter Attia — on Women's Hormones and Testosterone

Peter Attia, MD is a physician whose main subject is longevity medicine. Much of his work is on topics other than women's health specifically (exercise physiology, metabolic health, cancer prevention, rapamycin and longevity interventions), but he has devoted substantial podcast time to women's hormones and female testosterone.

Core thesis relevant to women's health. Women's hormone replacement has been under-prescribed and under-studied. Testosterone in women is a genuinely important and poorly-addressed clinical question. The longevity framing applies to women as much as men, and women's hormonal changes in midlife are a core variable in long-term healthspan. His podcast has hosted extended interviews with ISSWSH-aligned clinicians, NAMS-aligned menopause specialists, and researchers working on female testosterone and longevity.

Where to find his work. The Drive podcast (extensive women's health content, particularly episodes with Kelly Casperson, Mary Claire Haver, and others). Outlive (2023) — primarily longevity-focused, with some women's health content. Ongoing website and substack.

Why he matters to this conversation. Attia is not primarily a women's health clinician, but his platform has significantly broadened the audience for rigorous women's hormone content. Biohacker-oriented readers often encounter women's hormone research through his podcast first.

Dr. Stacy Sims

Stacy Sims, PhD is an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist whose work centers on sex-specific exercise physiology. She has been one of the most prominent researcher-communicators on the thesis that women's bodies need training and nutrition designed for them — not the generic (mostly male-based) frameworks most of sports science still defaults to.

Core thesis. Women are not small men. Sex differences in physiology — cycle-related, menopausal, and baseline — are substantial and clinically relevant in exercise, recovery, and nutrition. Training protocols, caloric and macronutrient guidance, and recovery approaches should be adjusted for sex and hormonal context.

Where to find her work. ROAR (2016) — the foundational popular book on sex-specific exercise physiology for women. Next Level (2022) — focused on midlife women specifically. Academic papers in exercise science journals; podcast appearances widely available.

Why she matters. Sims is not primarily a hormone therapist; she is an exercise physiologist. But the women's biohacking conversation interacts continuously with her work, because training, recovery, and nutrition are integrated into most women's optimization frameworks. Her academic grounding makes her a good reference for telling evidence-based claims apart from marketing in the fitness-biohacker world.

Dr. Kelly Casperson

Kelly Casperson, MD is a board-certified urologist with a focus on women's sexual health and the genitourinary syndrome of menopause. Her podcast You Are Not Broken has been one of the most influential women's sexual health podcasts of the last several years.

Core thesis. Female sexual health, particularly in midlife, has been under-addressed in both primary care and specialty medicine. Genitourinary symptoms of menopause are common, highly treatable, and routinely overlooked. Her public work focuses on education about what treatments exist (local estrogen, testosterone, sex therapy, pelvic floor physical therapy) and on destigmatizing the conversation.

Where to find her work. You Are Not Broken podcast (weekly). Her book of the same title (published in 2024). Speaking engagements and social-media presence.

Why she matters. Casperson is a credentialed specialist in the exact category — female sexual medicine in midlife — that intersects most directly with women's biohacking hormone protocols. Her framing is medical rather than biohacker, but she engages the full range of interventions including compounded testosterone and the sexual medicine literature. Readers working on the sexual health dimension of the women's biohacking conversation frequently encounter her first.

Dr. Rachel Rubin

Rachel Rubin, MD is a board-certified urologist with fellowship training in sexual medicine. She is one of the most publicly visible US physicians specifically in female sexual medicine, and is an active public educator on testosterone therapy for women, HSDD, and the ISSWSH framework.

Core thesis. Female sexual dysfunction has effective medical treatments that are under-prescribed because of gaps in physician training and the absence of an FDA-approved female testosterone product. Treatment of HSDD should be considered part of standard care, not a specialty-only intervention. Local estrogen, testosterone therapy, and pelvic health interventions have evidence bases that support routine clinical discussion.

Where to find her work. Conference presentations (ISSWSH, AUA, The Menopause Society); podcast appearances widely available including on The Drive; active social media presence (@drrachelrubin) with substantial educational content.

Why she matters. Rubin is one of the public faces of ISSWSH's current-generation sexual medicine practice. Readers oriented toward understanding sexual medicine as a formal specialty (as opposed to the broader biohacker framing) will find her work the most concentrated entry point. See also our overview of the US prescribing landscape for female testosterone for the structural context she regularly discusses.

Broader Research Voices Worth Knowing

Beyond the primarily public-facing clinicians above, several researcher voices are worth knowing if you want to engage with the primary literature directly:

Susan Davis, AO, MBBS, PhD. The lead author of the 2019 ISSWSH Global Consensus Position Statement on testosterone therapy for women. Director of the Women's Health Research Program at Monash University in Australia. Her publication record on female testosterone, SHBG, and sexual function is among the most substantial in the field.

Sue Carter, PhD. The foundational researcher on oxytocin and pair bonding. Her body of work on prairie voles and mammalian social bonding is the foundation most modern oxytocin research builds on. See our overview in what the research shows about oxytocin for intimacy and bonding.

JoAnn E. Manson, MD. Principal investigator of major menopause research trials including aspects of the Women's Health Initiative follow-up and the VITAL trial. A leading voice on the interpretation of WHI data and on the timing hypothesis for hormone therapy.

Claudio Soares, MD, PhD. Research on menopause, mood, and sleep. Prolific contributor to the NAMS position statements.

Independent biomarker-focused practitioners. A handful of non-academic voices in the hormone optimization space publish detailed content on labs and biomarker interpretation, oriented more toward the practitioner and patient-optimizer audience than toward academic medicine. Worth knowing as a reference point for the working vocabulary of that community.

How To Use This List

This list is not a substitute for clinical advice from a prescribing physician. None of these clinicians or researchers is the reader's personal doctor. Their public work is educational, not individualized.

What the list is useful for:

Orientation. A reader new to the women's biohacking conversation can sample across these voices and build a more accurate picture of the field than they'll get from a single source.

Cross-checking claims. When a claim circulates on social media or in marketing content, checking whether credentialed voices in the above list have addressed it — and how — is a reasonable sanity check.

Finding a clinical fit. The frame each of these clinicians represents can help a reader articulate what kind of clinical model they are looking for. A reader who resonates with Haver's framing is a clinical-care-model fit; a reader who resonates with Szal's framing is closer to integrative/functional; a reader for whom Attia's longevity frame is the anchor is closer to the biohacker-optimization model. Identifying the frame is useful before choosing a clinical platform.

Staying current. The women's biohacking conversation is moving fast. A handful of regular sources keeps the reader current without requiring constant search. Subscribing to two or three of the above is usually enough.

No list of this kind is neutral — every inclusion and exclusion reflects judgment. Readers with quibbles are encouraged to follow their own instincts and build their own reading list. This one is meant as a starting point, not an endpoint.