Dr. Shawana Mufti is a physician, surgeon and endurance hiker who thought she understood women’s health. Then her own body forced her to confront how much medicine had failed to teach even doctors about menopause.
She Thought She Knew Her Body
Dr. Shawana Mufti was not someone who expected ageing to slow her down.
An American Board-Certified OB/GYN and minimally invasive pelvic surgeon, she had spent more than 20 years caring for women. Outside medicine, she was intensely active—working out regularly, leading hiking groups in Virginia and travelling internationally for medical missions and demanding adventures.
She trekked through the mountains of Skardu.
She completed the Inca Trail in Peru.
And she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
Reaching that summit seemed to confirm everything she believed about herself: she was strong, disciplined, healthy and extraordinarily fit.
There had been no major medical change. No serious illness. No traumatic injury.
Then her shoulder stopped working.
The pain appeared without an obvious cause and progressively became severe. Her shoulder stiffened. Movement became restricted.
For a woman accustomed to climbing mountains and pushing her body physically, suddenly struggling to move one shoulder made little sense.
She underwent medical evaluation. Imaging did not provide an explanation that satisfied her. There were pain medications, physiotherapy and a long process of recovery.
But one question continued to trouble the physician in her:
Why?
Why would a healthy, physically active woman suddenly develop a painful frozen shoulder without trauma?
It would take nearly two years to recover.
But that shoulder would ultimately change the direction of her career.
When the Doctor Became the Student Again
By then, Dr. Mufti had already been practicing obstetrics and gynecology for more than two decades.
She had trained across different medical systems, specialized, operated and cared for thousands of women.
Yet as she searched for answers about what had happened to her own body, she confronted something uncomfortable.
Despite all that medical education, she had received remarkably little formal teaching about the full experience of the menopausal transition.
Medical training had taught extensively about menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, contraception and gynecologic disease.
But what happens throughout a woman’s body as ovarian hormones fluctuate and decline during midlife had received far less attention.
So the doctor became a student again.
She immersed herself in menopause medicine and hormone physiology, questioning, reading and learning with the same curiosity that had begun her medical career.
And suddenly, the picture became much larger.
Estrogen receptors exist throughout the body—not simply in reproductive organs, but in tissues including bone, muscle, cartilage and connective tissue.
Menopause does not explain every musculoskeletal problem, and symptoms such as shoulder pain always require appropriate medical evaluation. But musculoskeletal symptoms are increasingly recognized as an important and often underappreciated part of the menopausal experience.
For Dr. Mufti, the realization was transformative.
The shoulder that had frustrated her for almost two years had unexpectedly opened a door to an entirely new understanding of women’s health.
Looking Back at More Than 20 Years of Practice
As her understanding of menopause deepened, Dr. Mufti began looking back at more than 20 years of clinical practice differently.
The women had always been there.
Women complaining of poor sleep, anxiety, irritability, brain fog, painful intercourse, loss of libido, urinary symptoms, joint pains—or simply saying:
“I don’t feel like myself anymore.”
She had heard many of these complaints.
But like many physicians of her generation, she had not always been trained to connect them to the menopausal transition. Some symptoms were treated individually. Others may not have been explored deeply enough. Menopause itself was often not part of the conversation.
That realization was uncomfortable—and humbling.
How could a physician who had spent her career caring for women have been taught so much about their reproductive years, yet so little about this major transition in their lives?
And with that realization came an even bigger question:
If this gap existed in her own medical education and practice in the United States, what was happening to women in Pakistan?
The Question That Took Her Home
The answer was sobering.
There was little awareness of perimenopause. Many women had never even heard the word. Symptoms and declining health were often accepted as an inevitable part of getting older.
Ageing was natural.
But suffering was too often being accepted with it.
And the knowledge gap was not limited to women. Menopause had little structured presence in medical education, leaving many physicians with limited formal training in recognizing and managing the menopausal transition.
For Dr. Mufti, what had begun as a personal search for an explanation was becoming something much larger.
It was becoming a mission.
In the years following COVID-19, she began taking that knowledge back to Pakistan—creating menopause awareness, bringing evidence-based bioidentical and transdermal hormone therapy into the conversation, training physicians, taking menopause education into medical colleges and eventually establishing DSM Clinics for specialized menopause and healthy-ageing care.
But that is the next chapter.
What began with one unexplained frozen shoulder had already changed the direction of her life.
The patient became the student. The student returned to being the physician. And the physician came home with a new purpose.
The mountains she once climbed were physical. The one ahead is much larger.
And in 2026, for Dr. Shawana Mufti, the journey has only just begun.
Shawana Mufti, MD, FACOG
Minimally Invasive Pelvic Surgeon | American Board-Certified OB/GYN | Hormone Optimization Specialist | International Speaker
Transforming women’s health through hormone science, surgical precision, and global education.
Dr. Shawana Mufti is an American Board-Certified OB/GYN practicing in the Washington, DC area and a leader in minimally invasive pelvic surgery and hormone optimization. She is the owner and operator of Fairfax Loudoun OB/GYN Group in Virginia, USA, with over a decade of clinical excellence. A pioneering expert in Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT) in Pakistan, Dr. Mufti has played a key role in introducing and advancing evidence-based hormone care in the region. She actively trains physicians and educators internationally, elevating standards in women’s health. She is the author of the first-ever Urdu book on menopause, expanding access to essential health knowledge for women. As the founder of her own line of bioidentical hormones and skincare, she develops scientifically grounded solutions that support women in aging with vitality, balance, and confidence. Dr. Mufti is widely recognized as an international speaker and educator, using her platform to reshape how women understand hormones, menopause, and long-term health.
Leadership & Academic Roles:
– Head of International Student Affairs — Lahore Medical & Dental College (LMDC)
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