Frequently asked questions

A place to make sense of perimenopause and menopause, for women living through it, written with Pakistani and South Asian Muslim women in mind.

You can read the library, look up any symptom or treatment in Learn, take a six-question self-check and a symptom score, and read the community. With an account you can also track your symptoms and treatments and send your own record to your doctor.

Yes, Roshara is free.

Not to read. The library, Learn, the resources, the community, Where am I? and the symptom score are all open without one.

An account is for keeping things: the daily tracker, your journal, your treatments and test results, saved articles and saved scores. It is also what lets you post, reply, send a heart or report something in the community.

• Create an account

English, Urdu and Roman Urdu. Switch at any time from the language button at the top of every page.

A few things are still English only: the blog while its translations are checked, the weekly summary email, and the record you send to a doctor, which stays in English so the person reading it can. The privacy page and the terms are translated, and if a translation ever differs, the English page applies.

Roshara is led by a woman relying on her own lived experience. Not a doctor, not a nurse, not a pharmacist. Roshara is the only name on anything here, because a real name would cost the same privacy this site exists to protect for you.

When a page talks about a treatment, it names the guidance it is reporting, such as the Pakistan Menopause Society's 2026 recommendations, NICE or the British Menopause Society, and says only what that guidance says. The editorial standards page sets out the rules.

• How Roshara writes about health

Start with a gynaecologist or a family doctor, and go prepared. Dedicated menopause clinics are rare in Pakistan, and the Pakistan Menopause Society's 2026 recommendations name that as a challenge. They are written for gynaecologists and primary care doctors alike, so either is a fair first stop.

Some doctors are more at ease with this than others, and the research says so plainly. A survey of Pakistani gynaecologists, run in 2021 and published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences in 2023 (Shah and colleagues), found that most had good, up-to-date knowledge of menopause hormone therapy. Their knowledge was weaker on preventing fractures, easing anxiety and depression, and weight gain, and the authors asked for refresher courses. An older survey is narrower. In April 1999, 103 doctors at one Karachi teaching hospital (internal medicine, family medicine, gynaecology and orthopaedics) answered questions on HRT (Shafi and colleagues, Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, 2001). 35% felt comfortable prescribing it themselves and 61.2% referred to gynaecologists. That is 1999 data from one hospital, so it is no picture of today.

So bring a short symptom record, and ask plainly: "Do you manage menopause, or can you refer me to someone who does?" You can ask for a gynaecologist with an interest in menopause. If you do not feel heard, a second opinion is an ordinary request. It is also fair to ask roughly what tests and follow-up visits will cost.

• Finding menopause care
• Talking to your GP or family doctor
• Preparing for your appointment

No. Roshara offers wellbeing support and education, not medical advice. Nothing here diagnoses you or tells you what to take. Always see a qualified healthcare professional for diagnosis and treatment.

If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency services or a mental health helpline straight away.

Six questions, about two minutes, no account. At the end you get a name for the stage you might be in, the term a doctor is listening for next to the way you would say it, and a short list of what to ask at your appointment.

Taken signed out, your answers are kept without your name, so the result can be shown to you again.

• Take Where am I?

Twenty-seven symptoms, each rated None, Mild, Moderate or Severe, scored 0 to 3, for a total out of 81. It takes a few minutes.

Signed out, it is added up on the page and never leaves your phone. Signed in, you can save it and see your saved scores side by side. You can also print it or save it as a PDF for your appointment.

• Take the symptom score
• Your symptom score explained

The score is built for comparison. Take one before a new treatment, then again at three and six months, and save each one so the next sits beside it.

No. The total carries no label such as mild or severe, on purpose. It is not built to measure you against other women, only against yourself, before and after a change.

No. Both are orientation and a record, not a diagnosis. Only a doctor can tell you what is happening in your body. What they can do is give you the words, and the numbers, to take into that appointment.

A daily check-in of mood, energy, hours of sleep and hot flushes, with a note, which takes about thirty seconds. A journal in your own words, tagged by how you felt. The treatments you are trying and the side effects you notice. Your test results, typed off your report. Your appointments and the questions you want to ask.

The dashboard, progress and timeline pages then show how your symptoms moved, and what changed around a new treatment. Only you can see any of it.

From your dashboard, email your record to any address you choose, such as your doctor's. It holds what you are taking, the side effects you have logged, your test results and your own notes for the period you pick, with your latest symptom score if you have saved one. It goes as one message, with nothing attached and no link to click, and it is in English.

You need to confirm your email address first, and you can send it up to five times a day. We keep neither the address nor a copy. You can also download it as a PDF and take it with you.

Yes. Set a daily check-in reminder and a weekly reflection, at the times you choose. They arrive as a notification from your browser, or as a message on the page if you have not allowed notifications. For now, Roshara has to be open in a tab for a reminder to reach you.

Separately, you can have a weekly summary of your trends emailed to your account address once you have confirmed it. It is the only email your account sends you.

• Set your reminders

Yes, by default. Every post and reply starts as anonymous, and other readers see "Anonymous" or "Member", never your name. Only you can see which anonymous posts are yours.

Anonymous is not private, though. Anyone can read the community, signed in or not, including search engines, so leave out anything that would identify you or someone else.

Signed-in members can report any post or reply and say why. A report goes to Roshara and nobody else, and the person who posted is never told who reported them.

Every report is read, and anything that breaks the community's rules comes down. It is not instant: allow hours rather than minutes.

• The terms, including the community rules

For an account: your email address and password, and a display name and age range if you choose to give them. Then your own record: check-ins, treatments, side effects, test results, appointments, symptom scores, journal entries, saved articles and reminder settings.

A symptom score taken signed out is never kept. A Where am I? result taken signed out is kept without your name.

• The privacy page in full

Your logs are yours. Nobody at Roshara reads them. Your record leaves Roshara only when you send it yourself.

No. We count visits, with no cookies and nothing that follows you to other sites. There is no advertising pixel and no error tracker.

The only thing stored in your browser is your colour theme, plus the sign-in cookie while you are signed in. Your data is stored in Singapore.

From Settings. Your account disappears at once, and you have 60 days to change your mind by signing in again. After 60 days your health data is deleted outright, and you come off our email list.

Your community posts and replies stay, made anonymous, so other women's conversations do not vanish. If you want a post gone, remove it from its own page first.

• Go to Settings