This last week of Women’s month I am focusing on women’s health and how women helped change it by becoming doctors themselves as in the first part. The second story I leaned into with my own struggles with an early hysterectomy. I then became pro-active as to the reasons behind it. There were many. Things that were buried. The Study They Didn’t Want You to See. Through it all it has finally come to light because women needed answers that they knew could be researched. The more we know we can pass onto the next generations and maybe fill in some thoughts and ideas from past issues that peak our own interest. This is one of mine, truth in medicine. And we are all the recipients of these women scientists need to know.
Dr. May Edward Chinn
While May Edward Chinn (born 1896) was the poor daughter of an escaped enslaved man and a Chickahominy woman, her mother’s job as housekeeper for Charles Tiffany allowed her to grow up learning side by side with the Tiffany children. There she had a classical education and learned languages and music. She had a love of music and enrolled in Columbia University Teacher’s College to study it. Her musical career would include giving piano lessons, and playing for four years with musician, activist and football player, Paul Leroy Robeson.
Because her struggles with racism and her lack of wealth hindered her ability to ‘finish’ her musical studies in Europe, she turned to her second interest: science. She had gotten accolades and worked in the lab in college, and so she applied to medical school. She became the first African American or Native woman to graduate as a doctor from Bellevue Hospital Medical College.
She was fair skinned but never attempted to ‘pass’, losing jobs and fellowships offered when she corrected misconceptions about her race. She was able to intern at the Harlem Hospital, being the first woman to ride on ambulances. But the hospital refused her practicing privileges.
She opened a private practice and had mainly poverty ridden patients. Many of her patients came to her with advanced cancers, and she tried her best to help them. Her research led her to work with George Papanicolaou, and she helped develop the Pap smear. She also started the routine of taking family cancer history to assess risk and advocating for early cancer screening of people with no symptoms.
After Mayor La Guardia’s push for integration, Chinn was finally granted practicing rights at the Hospital in 1940. In 1944, the Strang Clinic hired her to be a cancer researcher, and she would work there for the next 29 years.
She is a person you may not know about, but odds are, her advocacy for cancer screenings, family history records to assess risk, and early diagnosis is something you are familiar with.
Dr. Elena Richter
In 1998, a Female Doctor Made a Discovery That Should Have Changed Medicine. They Buried It Instead.
In the late 1990s, a neuroendocrinologist named Dr. Elena Richter noticed something strange.
She wasn’t treating dementia patients.
She was treating women in their 60s and 70s who looked “fine” on paper—but were falling apart inside.
Their brain scans were normal. Their bloodwork came back clean.
But they kept describing the same terrifying moments:
Standing in the kitchen, unable to remember the word for the thing they use to drain pasta. A word they’d known for fifty years. Gone.
Calling their daughter by their sister’s name. Their own daughter.
Telling their husband a story, watching his face shift. “Honey, you told me that yesterday.” No memory of it. None.
Walking into rooms with complete blankness. Not confusion—emptiness. Like a file had been deleted.
Other doctors told these women it was anxiety. Stress. “Normal aging.”
Dr. Richter saw the terror in their eyes. The unspoken fear:
Is this how it started for my mother?
She started digging.
The Pattern No One Else Saw
After reviewing hundreds of cases, she found something obvious that everyone had missed.
Almost every woman she treated had gone through menopause 10 to 15 years earlier.
The hot flashes had stopped. Life moved on.
But now, a decade later, something worse was happening.
Dr. Richter asked the question no one was asking:
What if menopause did something to the brain we’re only seeing now?
What she found changed everything.
The Five Systems That Went Dark
Estrogen wasn’t just a reproductive hormone.
It had been managing five critical operations inside the brain. Every day. For decades.
When estrogen dropped, those operations didn’t slow down.
They stopped.
System 1: The Regeneration Signal
Your brain grows new neurons using two proteins: NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) and BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor).
Estrogen directly stimulates both.
When it dropped, the signal telling your brain to regenerate went quiet.
System 2: The Structural Integrity
Estrogen maintains the myelin sheath—the protective coating that lets neural signals travel fast.
When it dropped, that coating degraded. Signals slowed. The “fog” set in.
System 3: The Cooling System
Estrogen controls brain inflammation.
When it dropped, chronic low-grade inflammation began building—what researchers call “inflammaging.” A slow burn damaging neurons year after year.
System 4: The Cleanup Crew
Estrogen acts as a powerful antioxidant, clearing oxidative damage while you sleep.
When it dropped, the “rust” started piling up faster than your brain could clear it.
System 5: The Gut-Brain Connection
Estrogen supports the gut bacteria that communicate with your brain.
When it dropped, that communication line filled with static.
Dr. Richter called this The Estrogen Void.
The symptoms weren’t aging. They were the cumulative result of a decade without repair. Without protection. Without cleanup.
Menopause didn’t just end. It left behind a void that had been widening ever since.
The Study They Didn’t Want You to See
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