10/13/2026
Thanks Myiesha Taylor MD, PhD for capturing some of the key points of my recent lecture at the IMMH in San Diego.
Myiesha Taylor MD, PhD
Dr. Felice Gersh MD’s presentation, “Mitochondrial Function, Mental Wellbeing and Hormones: A Vital Connection,” at the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference challenges this fragmented approach. She dived deep into the physiology and emphasized that we pay careful attention to hormones as regulators of *brain function*, cellular energy, and tissue health. Estradiol and progesterone have responsibilities *throughout the body*, and those responsibilities do not disappear when reproduction ends.
So why are we giving baby doses to grown women of the hormones that sustained them their entire lives simply because their own ovaries stop producing the needed levels of hormones?
Yet our clinical language often reduces estrogen to hot-flash relief and progesterone to endometrial protection. Dr. Gersh’s discussion of progesterone brought much more of its biology into view, including neuroprotection, myelination, nervous system repair, inflammation, and mitochondrial function. These are meaningful functions when the patient sitting in front of us is struggling to sleep, think clearly, or regulate her mood. And progesterone is needed even if the patient does not have a uterus. 🗣️ Progesterone’s only job isn’t endometrial protection.
But the mitochondrial connection makes this conversation especially relevant to mental health. The brain depends on a continuous energy production, and hormonal signaling participates in the systems supporting this demand. Damaged mitochondria release molecular signals that activate innate immune pathways, linking cellular injury, inflammation, and ovarian ageing. This places the menopausal transition within a broader physiological process involving energy metabolism, immune activity, and tissue function…
