Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life un Cut.
I'm Brittany and I'm Keisha, and today we are discussing a topic that so many of you have written into us. The guest has been one of the most requested guests that we have had in a very long time.
We are speaking to doctor Louise Newson, now Dr Newson or we will refer to her as Louise, I have asked for that permission. Is a leading expert in the field of menopause and perimenopause. She's a GP menopause specialist, educator, podcaster, and author. She's the woman in the know of menopause and today we would like to break down the misunderstandings, the myths, the misconceptions and medical misogyny surrounding menopause. Louise, Welcome to the podcast.
Ah, thanks for the great introduction and thanks for inviting me.
We've done a couple of episodes on the podcast on all Things Women's Health, and the current theme seems to be that there's a lot of medical misogyny that we all go through, to the point that a lot of people didn't know what perimenopause was, and I was one
of them. I knew about menopause. I knew that when my mum experienced hot flushes, she would say, oh, I'm going through menopause, and she had a lot of side effects to do with her mental health and changes to her body, and other than that, I didn't really know much about it. Louise, can you talk to us about the difference between perimenopause and menopause?
Yeah, for sure. The whole thing about all of this is that there's just a hell hormonal imbalance. So in an ideal world, I don't think we should be talking about perimenopause menopause, because then we're forgetting women who have PMS pre mental syndrome, or PMDD pre mental dysphoric disorder, or even postnatal depression, which is related to changing hormones. What happen is usually as we age, but it can
be at any age. Our hormones fluctuate and reduce. Our hormones are just chemical messages that they're all around our body, but they're really important, so they affect every cell in our body. So when the levels aren't optimal in our body, we can get a myriad of symptoms and also some biologically negative effects in our body as well. The whole definition of menopause is a year after our last period, which is I just think, really just I'm not bothered
about my period. I'm not bothered when it is, I'm bothered about my function, bothered about my brain. So the perimenopause is defined as when periods fluctuate and change and people get menopause or symptoms. But lots of people don't have periods, or they have artificial periods because they're on contraception, And a lot of women are saying, well, I'm getting regular periods and my perimenopausal or not, and that's why I think, I don't know. I hope you agree as women,
I'm more than just my periods, do you know. So it's looking at what are hormones, what do they do in our body? Why are they having this effect? And then we can open the conversation to my thirteen year old who's started periods and feels terrible a day before her periods to my I can't tell you how old she is, my mother who has been menopausal for thirty years.
You know, it's sort of we've got to be changing the conversation because otherwise people are no. My doctors told me I can't be menopausal because it's only eleven months and you know, two days since my last period. Therefore, it's like, oh, come on, please, you're having symptoms affecting the quality of your life. You have health risks without hormones. Let's just be a bit more grown up about this conversation. And that's why I think a lot of work has to change.
Well, I think that's really interesting because I've always been under the understanding exactly what you just said before that menopause happens when you have from a year to the day not had a period. So it's interesting that you say, like, that's rubbish. How would you define menopause then?
So I don't think I need to define menopause. I think what we need to define is a hormone imbalance in women's bodies and a hormone deficiency or insufficiency. Because the thing about menopause, if you take a step back and think, actually, what happens to our body a year after our last period? And if it's elite year, do we do three hundred and sixty five days or three hundred and sixty six days? Like? It's just getting a
bit silly, now, isn't it. Like I'm trying to read I've read a lot of history books from the eighteen hundreds recently for a tour I'm doing in September, and I can't work out who actually decided who sat around a table and were it was all men obviously because they were only male doctors then, so who actually decided that it's a year? Like it just doesn't seem right. It's another way of sort of gasiting women and putting us into a box and just making everything normalized when
we're feeling terrible. So I think we should be talking about a hormone insufficiency. I think we should be realizing that the three hormones we're talking about are estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, and we can lose or have changes in these levels of hormones at different times. So some people are more testosterone deficient the nestrogen deficient. There's a lot of women out there, especially with endometriosis who have progesterone
deficiency more than estrogen or testosterone. But all these hormones are just derived from cholesterol. They're all natural hormones that are made in our ovaries, of course, but they're also made in our brains and other organs in our body. So we have to be thinking about what's going on in our brain, because without our brains, with nothing are we And for too long we've just been concentrating on how heavy are your periods? Do you get period pain?
Are they regular? Are they not? Like it's irrelevant. Actually I can cope with any periods if I'm functioning as a person, if you see what I mean.
Yeah, absolutely, Louis. Not many of us would be going for regular blood tests. Not many of us would have kind of any idea of what levels our hormones of any of the three that you mentioned were at. So what are some of the other symptoms that there could be a hormonal change happening?
Yeah, and that's a really important question. And even if we did go for blood test, do you know what, I did some blood tests on a patient ten times in a day and they were completely different every single time. Wow, And so our hormones fluctuate all the time. But the other thing is when you do a blood test, what hormone is in the level of woman in my blood is not the same that's in my brain or my tissues.
And so there's a lot of wasted money on blood tests where people are just going, oh, no, my blood test is normal, But I'm waking up eight times in the night, and I've got night sweats, and i can't concentrate, and my blood is shot to pieces, but you know, my heart. So we have to be really careful. But we also have to remember in medicine, not everything needs a test. Like I have migrain. I don't need a
brain scan or a blood test to diagnose migrain. I need somebody who's an expert, and me as an expert patient to make that diagnosis. If I've got the right information, if there's certain classic symptoms of migrain which enabled me to make the diagnosis myself actually as a patient, but also as a doctor, if I'm seeing women with migraine,
exactly the same with hormonal changes. And what we have to do is, which is what's forgotten for many years, actually is talk to women properly, ask them to help with the decision making about the diagnosis. And often when people have the right information, and that's one of the
reasons I develop the Free Balance app. That people can have information, they can look at symptoms, and there are lots of symptoms we can talk about, and then it's that light bulb moment going, oh, yeah, actually I'm getting those symptoms and they're worse before my periods, when my hormone levels are at their lowest. That must be somehow related to my hormones. Might not be everything, but it might be ten percent or eighty percent related to my hormones.
But actually, if it is related to my hormones, do I need an antidepressant or a painkiller or a sleeping tablet or do I just need some natural hormones? And then you're changing that whole conversation. But you've got to put you know, I went into medicine to help people feel better, but also to have my consultations where the payats are in the center. So if a patient's coming in to me and saying, do you know what, I
think this is related to my hormones? Ninety nine point nine percent of the time that lady is right, and the problem is so many times every day in my clinic people have said, but I'm not listened to. Doctor. I've tried to explain and I've not listened to. And that's in all countries, not just in the UK.
Doctor Louise, this is something that I've been diagnosed with peacos nearly two years ago. I had seen three different GPS. For anyone listening who doesn't know polycystic avariance inndrome, it's a hormone in balance. I have fluctuating hormones of all different kinds of levels. And like you said, I've had blood tests that showed things were normal. I've had blood tests that showed that things were excessively abnormal. I saw so many doctors I presented with so many of the symptoms.
I was fatigued, I had brain fog. I had a feeling within my body that something wasn't right, and I constantly felt invalidated. And it took for me to actually go and get roacotane. I went and saw a dermatologist and she was the one who led me to an endocrinologist who ended up saying, we need to get to the bottom of what's going on with your hormones. So
for me, that was a really frustrating experience. And I can only imagine that women going through the period of being maybe forty into their fifties, you know, this either perimenopausal or menopausal state. Because of how many of us are going to experience this, I would have hoped that doctors would be a lot more receptive to these concerns and these symptoms that so many of us are going to present with.
Is that the case, Yeah, you'd hope, But I think one of the problems, many problems in traditional medicine. Actually one of it is that we've been trained and we still are, to treat disease rather than prevent. We also have become more and more siloed, so that if I was a cardiologist, I would only be looking at the heart, If I was a neurologist, I would only be looking at the brain. And you know, I'm a general physician, so I have been trained to look at every organ.
Because they're called sex hormones, it's almost like they're an optional extra, but they're not about sex, they're not about gender. Men have estrogen and progesterone. Testosterone is the most biologically active hormone we have, so they're heterosexual hormones, they're health hormones, but they've almost been put to the bottom of the pile.
And the other thing. In medicine, we're often so busy thinking about how to prescribe a medication that we are also not thinking holistically about treatment options because hormones often are really important, but so is everything else as well. So it's not just take the hormones and go away and enjoy your life. It's like, let's rebalance your hormones. When I see you again, let's then talk about your lifestyle,
your exercise, your sleep, your stress, everything else. And that's often forgotten because in medicine it's quite a conveyor belt.
You know, you're in and out. You deal with one problem, one consultation, but actually, if you spend time helping people as soon as they start to have symptoms, you know, so we're investing in future health and people that I see in the clinic, it's transformational medicine because with hormones, if their symptoms are due to hormonal changes, the symptoms improve, they feel better, which is wonderful, but more importantly, they
are improving their future health. They're reducing risk of disease, keeping away from doctors and enjoying their lives, and that's what we all should be working towards as doctors.
Doctor Louise, what was it that made you so passionate about hormones and this research that you're now conducting with perimenopause and menopause as a GP? What was it that made you go down this path?
It's mainly I was working part time as a GP, but I was also a medical writer for many years, unstripping sort of evidence, looking at all diseases and conditions and writing about them so that doctors and patients could understand more. And I was asked to write a review on the guidelines for menopause that came out in twenty fifty. So I reread all the evidence and I was shocked by how it's been misinterpreted by so many people, and I thought, this is outrageous. And then I started to
experience symptoms that didn't realize. I spent six months shouting at my husband, having unretracted infections, worsting my brain, putting on weight, it just feeling miserable that thought I couldn't cope with my third child, at my job and everything else. But the biggest thing that drives me is that I decided as an individual to take hormones, including testosterone, but I can't get them from my NHS doctor the dose and type I'm on, So if I can't get them like,
that's really hard for others. And so every day I speak to women who don't come to the clinic. You know, women who are very disadvantaged, and they're being sidelined in society. They've been given these other drugs, is cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, pain killers. They know it's their hormones, but they can't access it in the way that I can't access it.
So I'm determined not to stop and tell every woman who wants to get the treatment that's right for her is able to because it's such an injustice to women.
As a GP. Were you specifically, like when you went through med school and I guess even when you were practicing. Are there things in place to educate gps that this is something that half the population are likely to experience?
No, not properly. I certainly I didn't get any education as an undergraduate or a postgraduate, and I did a lot of hospital medicine before general practice, So I did psychiatry, I did cardiology, I did rheumatology, I did gastro entrology, I did cancer medicine. Jobs no one to speak about hormones at all, then, no. I mean, we've created a Confidence in the Menopause Education Program, which is a remote
program where we've videoed ourselves doing consultations with actresses. We've got links to the available evidence, and you know that's head over thirty three thousand downloads. So it's a really sort of different course that's available to people in Australia, to people in any country to learn from because you have to learn the evidence, but you also have to be able to put the evidence into clinical practice. And
that's the art of medicine is individualizing care. So education has to be completely transformed for everybody, not just gps, not just nurses, not just pharmacists. Every single healthcare practitioner needs to know about hormones.
Which is absolutely wild to think that something that affects fifty one percent actually of the population is something that's not even taught to you guys when you're practicing. I think people underestimate the impact of hormones. And I'm glad you said what you said. Before, because I didn't know that that you tested one patient ten times in a day and the hormones fluctuated the entire day. How much scientifically speaking, how does the pill work in suppressing hormones?
And I guess i'd love to know your expert opinion on the contraceptive pill.
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And again, I feel doing a lot of reading about history of contraception for this tour that I'm doing, but I've also got a pathology degree, so I'm really interested in science how things work in our bodies and how things don't work when
we have conditions and illnesses. But our hormones estrogen progesterone, testosterone are structurally we know the molecular structure, so the biochemical structure, and all the hormones that are prescribed as contraceptives, they're called estrogen progesterone, but they're synthetically made, so they're
chemically altered. So if you think about a lock and a key, we have, like the lock, the receptor on every single cell, and if you think of the hormone as the key, it goes in, it fits nicely, and then you've got these lovely chemical reactions occurring in every cell that are really beneficial for our body. And that's what estrogen, progester in, testosterone we produce, as well as insulin and thyroxin and adrenaline and quarters are all these
other hormones. They all have the lock where the key can go in and then you know, our bodies are amazing when they work properly. Now, these hormones have been chemically altered, so they might fit the lock, but they're not going to unlock. They're not going to have this lovely cascade of reactions. But also when they're in that lock, they're blocking another key coming in, so they're blocking the
natural hormones coming in. So it's almost a double whamme, officer when people are on hormones as contraception, in that they're sort of blocking their natural processes occurring and they're blocking the natural hormones working. Now, some of them are different to others, so some of them will have like a partial turning of that lock, so they might have some chemical reaction that's beneficial, but a lot of people have side effects. We know to the contraceptis like you
felt numb, you felt flash. You know, a lot of my teenage children friends are just put on the pill, and then they're put on antidepressants without anyone thinking, oh, what's happening, Why is this happening. And when contraceptions were first brought out in the sixties, they had done no studies on contraception. They just did studies on the womb and saw that periods became lighter and thought, great, women don't like heavy periods. Let's give it. Then after a
year they said, let's market there's contraception. But no one did any studies on the metabolism in the body. They didn't do any studies on heart or inflammation or the brain function. There were some studies where they gave women like a hundred times the dose they do now and women were vomiting, have blood cuts, But they dis ignored some of those studies because they wanted to get it
out to market because there was a massive market. Obviously, we all want contraception when we don't want to be pregnant, and this is part of the problem. Now there's a myriad of contraceptives, and obviously I'm not saying we can't have them, but there are ones that have different effects on different people, and we need to be really careful what we give and listen again to women.
What is the general age guidelines of when women usually stop their period in going to minipause. And I know that's not a cut number.
Yeah, so I mean it's a great question. But on average it's about the age of fifty in the UK, probably in Australia as well. India it's lower, it's about forty five. And this is a really important but about one in thirty women under the age of forty will have an earlier menopause. So I've seen in my clinic this week two women who have never had periods, so their ovaries didn't develop properly, so they were menopause at age fourteen. They were bugged on the contraceptive pill, never
felt great, so they just need proper natural hormones. One of them has now got osteoporosis aged thirty eight. So lots of women will become menopausal at an earlier age. And sometimes it might be because their ovaries are removed in an operation, or they've had a hysterectomy, or they've had some chemotherapy or drug treatment for cancer that's affected
their ovaries working. But a lot more women will have hormonal changes, so about ninety percent of us have PMS, but like you just, oh, it's only two or three days a month, but actually that's about a month a year that you're not functioning properly and not performing properly. But about one in twenty I think probably more have PMDD, which is a more severe form of PMS. It's really flawing people and they are just given antidepressants, but that's not treating the underlying cause.
Yeah, we've actually done an episode quite recently on PMDD that if anyone is thinking that that could be something that they're experiencing, will link it. In the show notes that was with an endochronologist, Luis. You spoke briefly about these changes in function, saying that at these time when our hormones are acting differently, we can be not functioning. What does that look like in day to day life, Like, how would someone identify that's a symptom? Maybe there's something going on inside.
Yeah, so there's a myriad of symptoms and you'll be pleased to hit not everybody gets every symptom, but symptoms can come and go, they can change between people, but also between time as well. The commonest symptoms and we've done a survey of six thousand women. But we hear it all the time in the clinic too. But the commonest symptoms are symptoms affecting our brain, so brain fog ma, memory problems, fatigue, low mood, anxiety, inability to concentrate, irritability,
this iridescent rage that just comes from nowhere. But also just feeling more withdrawn, not feeling quite so engaged with people, feeling just quite flat, quite joyless, having very little motivation. A lot of people just feel like they're just existing
rather than living. And then people can get headaches, and then you know, if you work down the body, people can get dry eyes, they can get changes in smell, they can get sore mouth, they can get changes in taste, they can get tinatus in their ears, hearing problems, breathing problems. People can get palpitations, irritable bounds type symptoms. People can get dry skin, itchy skin. They can get worsening xma. They can get this formication, this sort of feeling of
spiders crawling over their skin. They can get pins and needles, they can get nerve pain, they can get muscle and joint pain. And as I'm working down the body, Hopefully you'll realize it's no surprise because I said at the beginning of this show that our hormones affect every single cell, therefore every single organ in our body. So if if that beautiful key and lock lovely chemical reaction isn't occurring, then our bodies don't work properly, and especially a lot
more symptoms occur before periods actually stop. When our hormones are in flux, they're going up and down, and that really causes a lot of chaos to our organs, especially our brain.
Is there a male version of this, and I don't mean a male version of menopause, but like a huge point in life that their hormones change.
Yeah. So testosterone deficiency obviously is a thing, but it's about thirty to forty percent of men, and it's usually just as they age, their testosterone levels reduced and they can have very similar symptoms. The other thing, it's not just symptoms because without these hormones, our organs don't work as well, so we have an increased incidence of heart disease, diabetes,
clinical depression, an osteoporosis, dementia. These are all conditions that are inflammatory, so they cause more inflammation in our bodies, and that's the same for men as well.
So Luise, let's say that someone is let's say hypothetically, they're forty eight years old, they're feeling a little bit checked out of life, They're feeling as though they've just lost a little bit of passion and a bit of oomph. They go to their GP and they say, I think I could possibly be entering the early phases of menopause. What happens next, Well.
Many of the question because it depends what that doctor says. But in an ideal world, that doctor will listen, talk through symptoms, to talk through what else is going on. And often we do do a blood test to make sure there's nothing else going on, because I don't want to say, oh, it's related to your hormones, but then find that that woman has an undirective thyroid gland, or she's got lo iron or you know, something else going on. So often the tests are done to exclude other causes.
So if in conjunction with the patient, as a doctor, I feel that it's related to their hormone or I think some of their symptoms might be then I will just say, well, let's try hormones you know, they're very safe. We're very fortunate we have the natural hormones available to prescribe, which are safer than the contraception. They are just the same chemical structure as our own hormones, and we have
them in different doses. We give them individually, so some women I think, well, you might be more progesterone deficient than estrogen deficient, or vice versa. So we start with some hormones and then review people after about three months, and they might say this symptom has improved, that this one hasn't. And then we can try and work out do they then need a different dose or a different type,
or a different formulation. And then often do do testosterone levels because it's a guide, and if their testosterone level is low and they have symptoms suggestive of testosterone deficiency, then we often try testosterone as well. And the hormones are very safe. You know, they don't last in the body.
They only last a day that you use them. Actually, a lot of people say, well, I'll try them and see, because they're safer than giving an antidepressant or a painkiller or something else that is a chemical in the body. And if they don't work, you just don't continue taking them. It's it's not difficult, but the hardest thing is for women to be believed and to see someone who understands hormones.
And so natural hormones is a script that you would need to get from your doctor, and it is not something that somebody can just go and purchase at a health shop or a pharmacy.
No, no, no, you can bite worse things at a health shop, but they are prescribable. But we usually give the estrogen through the skin as a patch or gel because then it gets absorbed straight into the bloodstream keeps us A natural estrade progesterone can be to given orally or sometimes we give it as a psari and the testosterone is either a cream or a gel. So it's very easy medicine, it really is.
So after you know a patient has come in they've started on hormone replacement therapy, and let's say you get the concoction right straight away, what changes do they feel within themselves?
So if their symptoms are due to hormonal changes or lowering of their hormones, then they feel better, and that can take a little while. Sometimes people start to feel better within days. Sometimes it can take weeks or months. And that's partly because the cells the body has got to use these hormones in an efficient way. And not only do they have chemical reactions going on in the cells, they can also affect our genes, our genetic material, and
that can just take a bit longer to occur. So usually people say, gosh, I started to feel better, and now I feel so much better, but it's taken three months or so. But if they've still got some other symptoms, we can change the dose. Or they might say, well, I rub the gel on and it just slides off my arm, so therefore they're not absorbing it, so they might need to use a different dose or change to a patch. That's where individualization of dose is really important.
Why do you think hormone replacement therapy gets such.
A bad rap ah? There's so many reasons. Partly it's because because of this study that came out in two thousand and two, this WHI Women's Health Initiative study, and it showed this breast cancer or supposed breast cancer risk with women who were taking HRT. But the thing about
that study is it wasn't giving natural hormones. It was giving hormones that estrogen was derived from pregnant horses urine and the progesterone was a synthetic progesterone, which is actually in the contraception, and actually it was only the combination. So with the synthetic progesterone, there was this small increased risk of breast cancer, but it wasn't statistically significant. But you know, we don't prescribe that, So what's the point
of even thinking about that study? Actually we know we've known for a hundred years how important our natural hormones are to help our bodies work. But you know what, they're really cheap. They're not very exciting because they just had natural hormones, so big farmer don't make loads of money from it. But there's also this whole thing about the way women are treated in general and not listened to, which I don't know how to change that narrative.
Are there any risks associated with hormone replacement therapy?
So not with then that sure, because why would we have hormones in our body that are at risk to us?
Like it doesn't make sense. Everyone worries about risk of class or risk of cancer, but that's with synthetic hormones that have been chemically altered because they don't have the same biological effect of the body, Like, why would we be designed to have a hormone that's dangerous in our body if it's given in the right way, in the right formulation, and the right dose as well, So you know, of course, I mean I use testosterone a lot in
my patients. I personally use it. If I was using ten times the dose, I'm sure I'd get side effects or problems, But why would I do that. All we're doing is replacing what's missing, so it's very safe. Yeah.
Interesting. Have you heard of many I mean, I guess this would be anecdotal more than an actual study. Have you heard of many people reporting changes in their relationship either going through menopause or going through menopause and then going on hormone replacement therapy?
Yeah, for sure, every time. I mean I wrote about it in my book The Definitive Guide. I've got a section about relationships, and I talk personally about how much I hated my husband and I was paring menopausal. It's just the noise of his breathing just triggered me. But yeah, a lot, because if you think of those symptoms I mentioned, especially the irritability. You know, it's like you've got this demon in your head telling you you can just shout
at anyone, especially people that you love. And so there's the mood changes, but there's also the physical changes. You know, if you look down at your body and you're putting on weight, you've lost your muscle tone, you're feeling horrible, like you're not going to jump into bed with your partner, and then if you do, you often have vaginal dryness or soreness, or you know you're going to get your only tracked infection after having sex, and you're like, oh,
I can't do it, I can't do it. I'm just going to sleep, and I hope he watches a film and has a glass of wine downstairs and doesn't can't stairs, you know, while I'm still awake. And it just has this massive divide. And so most women I speak to in the clinic when they have hormonal changes, they're not having an intimate relationship. They do love their partner, but they really are having a lot of problems, but they're
not able to talk about it. And the partners don't know how to bring it up because there's so much anger in the person and you know, divorce rates increase, but it's not just the partner, it's a family. So children are affected. They listen to arguments they'd not watching. You know, even my children so many where we thought you were going to divorce. You were so cross and we were so scared, and we were a really open family. And I've been with my husband since I was eighteen.
But I often think, gosh, if I didn't have a stable relationship, if I had raw children and I didn't have a job and I was a single mum, like I would be shouting at my children, like what's going on behind four walls of so many homes? When there's such a simple answer. Because I've been telling so many times, you know, DODR. Newston, you have saved our relationship. You
have saved our marriage. And it's not me. I haven't done it, but the hormones have because they've become rebalanced with their hormones and they can carry on as they should be. So it's awful. I've done a lot of work with divorce lawyers and you know, they hear the same women but coming to their forties, but then they're blamed on it's their job. It's because they've got young children, and it's because they're trying to work full time. But
people don't say that to men, do they. You know, you're not coping with your high powered job.
Therefore, well, that's the thing, isn't it. It's because menopause and perimenopause and what actually happens and what it means isn't spoken about. It's definitely not what it didn't used to be communicated with husbands and partners. So of course they didn't understand. They just think she's changed. You know, you don't love me anymore. You don't do this for me anymore. There's no understanding purely because there's no education in communication.
Waits.
How much does our lifestyle have an impact on our hormones?
Yeah, it has a really important effect, and so much so that often we don't know because no research is done in it, but certainly are what we eat can really make a difference to our hormones. We also have to remember that our hormones like three hormones istum, gesture, and testostere and have an impact on quartisole because they're all made from the say, the very quartisole is very similar structure to these other hormones, and so if we're stressed,
it can affect our hormone levels. Certainly what we eat or what we don't eat, or if we don't sleep well. All our hormones are very closely linked. They work very closely together. So it's like a big seas already we've got to look at everything together. But the problem is a lot of women have said told, well, if you improve your diet, if you exercise, you know, I'm sure you've been told with pecos oh, just you know, change
your diet and everything will be fine. Well, actually rebalance your hormones, and then it's so much easier to look at your nutrition, look at your exercise, look at everything else together.
When you say diet and food is a huge thing that can impact it, is there something specific or you just mean not overall healthy eating? Do you like, is there a study that says that sugar is a trigger?
Yeah? So often with nutrition and exercise, it's just very simplistic. You know, I'm not a nutrition expert or sports you know, coach or anything, but a lot of it is trying to avoid processed foods. It's looking at not just what we eat, but what we drink because alcohol obviously has an effect on our metabolism, but also any fizzy drinks, any drinks that aren't water or herbal teas are going to have an effect. Even caffeinated drinks can have an effect.
We know that people's nutrition generally is nowhere near the same as it was thirty years ago, and of course that's going to have an effect on our hormones as well. Even just the quality of our sleep is really important. You know, we're all different. Some people need eight hours. I can survive quite well on six six and a half hour sleep. But it's not just how long you are asleep for it's how you're relaxing. How are you switching off, are you waking up several times in the night,
or are you sleeping all the way through? You know, and all these things work together. You know, if I ate well, I don't eat caffeine, but if I had a chop before I went to bed, I know I'll be awake all night because you know, it affects me and then that will have a detrimental effect of my hormones. But other people can eat chocolate and go straight to sleep. So that's why we have to be looking what's right for us not judging ourselves with other people.
Always in terms of other hormonal conditions, things like diabetes, things like peacos I mean, hyperthyroidism, whatever it might be. Does that change the onset or the severity of the symptoms in terms of menopause.
Yeah, it can be. I've just recorded a podcast actually with a lady with type one diabetes in her glucose control really changed when she had asurgical menopause, when her hormones plummeted, which just shows actually in real time, how our hormones are very closely linked. But it's not just about symptoms. It's about the metabolic effects in our body. It's obviously important to talk about symptoms, but we have
to be beyond that. Like when we talk about diabetes, we have really good control of sugar to improve that patient's future health. We don't ask them at nauseum about every symptom that they have. It's more about let's get your metabolic processes improving to reduce your risk of heart disease and kidney disease and stroke and everything else. And that's what we need to be doing with hormonal imbalances.
We need to be balancing their hormones to improve their future health, reduce inflammation, improve metabolic changes going on in the body. And the problem is, for decades centuries, it's been gynocologists controlling our ovaries, and gynocologists are very good at controlling ovaries and womb, but they're not thinking about the body as a whole and the metabolic processes that
are going on. And that's why I feel very strongly us as women who are experiencing these hormonal changes, need to have the information and education so we could make the right choices for ourselves about our hormones, about our lifestyle and everything else together.
Do we come out the other side?
Louise, Well, the day we die is the day menopa ends. You know, when we're menopausal, we have low hormones and they last forever. Not everyone has symptoms. A lot of people have less symptoms because they're not having this fluctuation, but without their hormones, they're still having this metabolic process. And that's why one in two women, for example, who are menopausal who don't take hormones have osteoporosis. You know,
insidance of heart attacks increase. We know that women have a reduced health span as they age, they have more chronic inflammatory diseases, but it's a choice. Some people say, well, I've got such an amazing lifestyle, I feel I won't get anything out of my hormones. But far too many women are scared of hormones. But their bone loss is increasing,
their inflammation in their body is increasing. They've got a cognitive decline and dementia, but they're not having hormones which would improve a lot of this.
Thank you so much for your time today and helping educate people on menopause and perimenopause and hormone replacement therapy and everything we discussed. There is so much more to the conversation, so if anyone does want to know, we are going to link all your podcast, show notes, your website, everything that people need in our show notes, So please go and find out more if this is affecting you, or maybe it's your mum or a friend or a sister, and everything will be in one place.
Thanks for inviting me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.