Flow Space

At 50, Linda Stuart started forgetting things she had never had trouble remembering before. There were the small things at first — taking her medicine in the morning, remembering to defrost the meat before dinner — ordinary tasks that had become so routine that Stuart, now 54 and living in Boston, barely had to think about them. Then one day, she was scrolling online when the possibility that had been quietly nagging at her suddenly became much more frightening.

Getting older comes with plenty of surprises — and not all of them are welcome. As if wrinkles and sagging skin weren’t enough, midlife can bring a whole new cast of characters to your complexion: cherry angiomas, skin tags and milia to name a few. Nobody warned us these would be part of the package. And yet, here we are.

A few new chin hairs after menopause are not necessarily cause for alarm. According to Los Angeles-based OB-GYN Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi, nearly 40% of women 45 and older experience excess facial hair growth, particularly on the chin. As estrogen falls while testosterone continues circulating, once-fine facial hairs can become coarser and more noticeable.

‘Standing Up for Me’: How Breast Cancer Changed a Ballerina’s Body — Not Her Voice Breast cancer changed the body Abigail Simon had spent a lifetime training — and forced her to grieve a career, rethink motherhood and learn what advocating for her future really means.

Breaking beauty news! For the first time in 20 years, SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic, the original — iconic — vitamin C serum has been reformulated. And this new tincture promises a little extra juice for your midlife skincare woes. SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic formula was so effective, it essentially created its own skincare category. To date, it is still a top-recommended product by many dermatologists.

The internet is crowded with health information — and not all of it is created with midlife women in mind. If Flow Space is one of the places you turn for clear, expert-backed coverage of perimenopause, menopause, brain health, longevity, relationships and everything else that shapes life after 35, you can now tell Google you want to see more from us. Google’s Preferred Sources feature lets you choose the publications you trust and prioritize their coverage in your search experience.

Aging can bring a lot of unexpected bodily shifts. Just ask Sophia Paliov. Overnight, this 54-year-old Southern Californian began dealing with acid reflux, random bloating, constipation, and a rebelling digestive system that suddenly despised her favorite foods. The eyeroll of usual suspects was to blame — hormones. Since the digestive tract relies heavily on estrogen, fluctuations during perimenopause and menopause can send both the gut and immune systems into chaos.

We’re learning more and more about how the brain literally changes with age — for example, menopause literally restructures it — and trying to figure out how to use that info to stay healthy in our later years. More research has been focused on looking into how transformations like these impact our chances of developing neurodegenerative diseases like dementia.

Juliana Vocca, 52, thought about filing for divorce “on and off” over the course of her 20-year marriage, which she says included verbal and emotional abuse. In 2023, she returned to a divorce attorney she’d visited years before after a night of arguing led her sister to call the police. While the divorce still isn’t finalized, she has no regrets — even if the process has been daunting.

For women who rely on estrogen patches to help with hot flashes, night sweats and other menopause symptoms, discovering that a refill is unavailable can be deeply unsettling — especially when the medication has brought much-needed relief. Yet that is what’s happening to millions of women as supplies remain uneven — and worse — out of stock.