Dr Louise Newson, Britain’s most controversial hormone doctor, is smiling today, relaxed and almost unrecognisable from the pale, grim-faced woman she appeared 18 months ago.

At that point a BBC Panorama investigation – backed by ‘medical consensus’ in the form of the British Menopause Society – questioned the professionalism of her privately run HRT clinics, Newson Health, and in particular their allegedly cavalier approach to prescribing often higher-than-recommended dosages.

It caused a wave of panic among her patients and Dr Newson, 55, was forced to lay off 27 of the 70 doctors she employed. For her, it was professionally devastating: a university professorship was withdrawn, media appearances were cancelled and an investigation was launched by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Earlier this year, however, Dr Newson was finally vindicated.

The CQC concluded that her clinic ‘is performing exceptionally well’ and rated it ‘Outstanding’, its services safe, effective and well led. All General Medical Council complaints against her were closed.

For Dr Newson, it was a battle won, confirmation of her long-held belief that body-identical forms of HRT, which are made from plant compounds and are chemically identical to those we produce naturally, should be given as a matter of routine to all menopausal women who ask for it.

With her batteries now fully recharged, you might expect her to sit back and enjoy the calm. But no, instead she is back with a book, The Power Of Hormones, which opens a brand new front against the medical establishment. And this time, paradoxically, her target is the unquestioning dishing out of hormonal treatment in the shape of the contraceptive pill.

She does not mince her words. Women take the Pill ‘without giving a second’s thought to how this hormone treatment is impacting on their current and future health’, she writes.

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