Latest / The Dr Louise Newson Podcast / 27 - Elizabeth Day on The Cost of Not Believing Women

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27 - Elizabeth Day on The Cost of Not Believing Women · The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

0:00
So for World Menopause Month in October, I'm going to be coming
0:03
to three theatres, the 5th of October in Glasgow with Kay
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Adams, the 12th of October in Birmingham with Liz Earl and the
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19th of October in Kingston near London with Emma Barnett.
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I'm going to be doing AQ and A so these women will be
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questioning me, asking me about my background, my work and also
0:25
about hormones. And the second-half will be
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audience asking questions, so there'll be lots of opportunity
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to put your questions across. You can ask me anything, of
0:34
course. And I really look forward to
0:36
meeting some of you there. My podcast today is with
0:41
Elizabeth Day, who's an award-winning author and
0:44
podcaster. She runs the podcast How to
0:47
Fail. Her most recent book is one of
0:50
Us, and we talk a lot about this.
0:52
We talk about some of the characters, but the main thing
0:55
that's weaved through our conversation is about women not
0:59
being believed or listened to. How we need to change it.
1:02
We need to improve conversations for women and we need to empower
1:06
them so that they can really be the best version of themselves
1:09
going forwards. So, Elizabeth.
1:14
Louise, I'm very excited. Doctor Newsome.
1:18
I'm so excited because I feel like I've been stalking you for
1:21
such a long time and just, but I just love how transparent you
1:25
are, how open you are. And it it's sometimes can go the
1:30
wrong way that people share too much and it's can be a bit sort
1:33
of over the top, but it's not. You just have this sort of air
1:37
of gracefulness, but also what you do is so inspirational as
1:41
well because you're allowing women mainly a space to just say
1:47
it's OK to not be wonderful. It's OK to have shit times, it's
1:51
OK to be really good as well. And I think that's really
1:56
important for conversations, isn't it?
1:58
Well, thank you so much. What a compliment coming from
2:00
you because I could say all of the same things back to you, but
2:04
I think you're completely right. There's something so powerful
2:08
and so connecting when we take the risk of being vulnerable and
2:13
saying this thing happened to me.
2:14
Does anyone else relate? And I'm sure you've experienced
2:17
this too. I was so bowled over by the
2:21
response anytime that I did that.
2:24
Something that felt so uniquely personal and maybe a little bit
2:28
niche. For instance, fertility, when I
2:30
started about fertility and this wave of response that I got from
2:35
a community that had been so marginalised and wrongly
2:39
stigmatised in silence for so long was one of the greatest
2:43
gifts of my life in a way, because then it makes you feel
2:45
less alone as well. Absolutely.
2:48
And I, it's weird, isn't it? Because we've got social media,
2:51
we've got our phones on our fingers, but we still can feel
2:53
really lonely and really vulnerable.
2:56
Yeah. And I think this is where
2:58
conversations are changing more than.
3:00
Like when I was a junior doctor, we didn't have Internet, we
3:03
didn't have social media. So our patients hung onto every
3:07
word we said in our consultations.
3:09
And we were a bit more God like as doctors.
3:12
Whereas now I love it because patients essential to the
3:16
conversation and the consultation and they're really
3:19
empowered and it might not all be with right information, but
3:22
they've got this knowledge that they'd never been allowed to
3:25
have before. So to share experiences, both
3:29
good and bad, is is really important I think, isn't it?
3:33
I totally agree and actually social media for all of its
3:38
flaws and for all of its ills, 1 great thing that it does is it
3:44
can reach out through the screen and help a bullied child in a
3:50
remote community in the UK who is struggling with their sexual
3:55
or gender identity. It can help them be seen and
4:00
find their community through the power of a hashtag, and that's
4:06
an incredible thing. And obviously it can be
4:08
manipulated and used for bad ends, but I don't think we
4:12
should ever forget that. No, no.
4:15
I mean, I started my Instagram. My daughter actually made me do
4:18
it because she was in her early teens and I was coming home from
4:22
just doing my clinic saying, Oh my gosh, I've seen this lady.
4:25
She just told me she'd been hit by a bus.
4:27
The symptoms came on overnight. She'd floored.
4:30
Stop working blandly, she said right, you put a picture of a
4:33
bus up and just explain I was hit by a bus, people will get
4:36
it. And I was like, that's a bit
4:37
abstract. And this was about 12 years ago.
4:41
And she was right. And then I started to get DMS
4:43
from people and I remember 1 quite soon after in my social
4:47
media. And she said I'm 28, I'm in
4:51
Canada. I'm crying reading your message
4:54
because I realised this is me or it could be me and but I don't
4:57
know how to get help. And it was just really struck me
5:01
that something that you can write very quickly while you'll
5:04
make a cup of tea can have such an impact but actually change
5:08
her future life. Now I'll never meet her, I'll
5:11
never talk to her, but she's now empowered with knowledge that
5:14
she can take to wherever she wants, and that's incredible.
5:17
Definitely. And I think there's a broader
5:20
context here if we're talking specifically about women,
5:23
because women have been conditioned for millennia
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wrongly to believe that their stories aren't important.
5:30
And part of that conditioning has relied on the notion that we
5:36
are the only ones experiencing it.
5:38
So we're a bit odd. We're a bit weird and we should
5:40
feel shame for it. And similar to you, I did an
5:44
interview recently on my podcast How to Fail with Vicki
5:47
Pattinson, and she spoke about having PMDD and I had never
5:52
heard of PMDD until I watched Married at First Sight and there
5:56
was a contestant on there who had PMDD and who spoke about it.
5:59
Then Vicki came on my podcast and spoke so unbelievably
6:03
eloquently about what she goes through every single month.
6:06
And that social media clip is one of our most popular ever
6:11
because it caused this crescendo of recognition amongst other
6:16
women who had felt uniquely unseen.
6:19
And, and I think there's something so potent about that.
6:22
And it's why I'm really glad in a way that I'm living through
6:25
this era at this age in our society.
6:30
And I said to you before we started recording, I'm so
6:32
grateful for the work that you do and other women like you.
6:36
Because I did not have a clue about the menopause.
6:40
I mean, I knew it would happen, but I didn't know how it might
6:45
show itself. And because of the work that you
6:47
do, I was able to recognize those symptoms and I was able
6:52
not to feel shame or weird or like I was losing it or becoming
6:56
quote UN quote unhinged or. And that's incredibly helpful
7:00
and powerful. Yeah, I sit there listening
7:03
about PMDD and I feel really sad actually, because I see a lot of
7:06
women with PMDD in the clinic and it's really easy to treat
7:10
because you just give hormones. There's a big drop before the
7:13
period, especially of progesterone, but often of
7:15
estradiol, sometimes testosterone as well.
7:18
And when I started doing my work, I thought I would just do
7:22
menopause, and of course, perimenopause comes in.
7:25
But now the most transformational work is seeing
7:28
people with PMDD because some figures say it's 5% of women
7:33
have PMDD. That doesn't sound much, but
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that's one in 20 women. That's a lot, but then 9095%
7:40
will have PMS premenstrual syndrome where we're told it's
7:44
just normal to feel a bit rubbish before your periods.
7:46
You can just feel a bit flat but it's not normal.
7:49
Actually our hormones are dropping but women with PMDD
7:53
have a high suicide rate. They have lots of intrusive
7:55
thoughts and I've spoken to a lot of women in their early 20s
8:00
who literally don't go out the house for three days a month.
8:03
They one lady said to me, I go into Tesco's just to remind
8:06
myself that are people living because I can't cope with the
8:09
thoughts in my head. But the rest of the month she's
8:13
worrying about these days coming.
8:15
So we know it. There's a big decline in
8:17
hormones. So what do I do?
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I give her hormones for three days a month and she's like, is
8:22
this legal? I've never felt so good in my
8:24
life. And it's like, this is so sad.
8:27
Like it's great. You know, these women are coming
8:29
out of the woodwork almost. But then as a doctor, we're
8:33
really failing women because it's such a simple treatment for
8:36
a lot of women. You know, sometimes it's fine
8:38
tuning, making sure the hormones are right, looking at everything
8:41
else as well. Can I ask you a slightly strange
8:44
question? Yeah.
8:44
Of course you can. In in the olden days when life
8:48
expectancy was much shorter for the medieval ages.
8:51
Yeah. Did that mean that women were
8:53
dying without having gone through menopause, or was
8:55
menopause earlier? Yeah, it's a great question
8:57
actually. So there's a couple of things
8:58
there. Women's life expectancy was
9:00
less. It was about 57, whereas now
9:02
it's in its 80s. So we live longer, 30 years or
9:05
so long, but our average menopause was more in those sort
9:08
of mid 50s. And that's partly because women
9:12
used to spend a lot longer pregnant.
9:14
If you think of Victorian times, you'd probably have about 10
9:17
pregnancies, you might have 7 live births, but you'd be
9:21
pregnant a lot and breastfeeding a lot.
9:23
So when you're pregnant, you have really high levels of
9:25
hormones in your body and people often feel great, but you're
9:30
preserving your ovaries. You're not producing an egg
9:33
every month. Do you see what I mean?
9:34
So your ovaries would last longer.
9:37
So then when you're not pregnant and you or you finish becoming
9:40
pregnant, whatever, then you're that's why people have
9:43
menopausal at a later age as well.
9:47
But then people say, well, where maybe women are whinging more,
9:50
maybe women are feeling more symptoms.
9:52
Well, let's look at how many women were locked up in asylums
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exactly, you know. And also exactly that.
9:58
More women, therefore, are experiencing this.
10:01
Yes, at a time when more women feel that they are emboldened to
10:05
speak. Yeah, not enough, but more?
10:07
Absolutely. But but it's just being called
10:09
different things. You know, look at the word
10:11
hysteria and hysterectomy. You know, there's a reason the
10:15
hist is the womb bit, of course. So, you know, we used to think
10:20
we, as in doctors used to think that it was a wandering womb.
10:23
The womb was to to blame for our mental health and before they
10:27
realised about hormones they knew something changed when our
10:30
periods stopped. And I've read some books from
10:33
the 1800s and they used to try and cut women because they knew
10:37
bleeding would help their mood. So they would cut women under
10:40
their breasts or in their ankles because they, and I get why they
10:43
did it, they were trying to help because they knew that bleeding
10:47
as in having a period, mental health would improve.
10:50
But if a woman had stopped her periods, IE menopausal, they
10:54
thought naively that bleeding would help their mood.
10:57
So they've We've known it for so long, but even now we know about
11:01
hormones. We know this hormonal dip.
11:04
There are millions of women globally who are not even
11:07
allowed to have hormones. They've been given
11:08
antidepressants or been told it's just part of being a woman.
11:12
It's really sad, isn't it? Yeah, well, I have been on HRT
11:16
for a year and when I started experiencing symptoms last
11:21
summer, I, although I didn't realize it was automatically
11:26
minimizing them. So I was feeling heightened
11:30
anxiety. But I thought, well, I've had a
11:32
really busy year and yeah, I'm now on holiday, so it's all
11:35
coming. My stress is sort of coming and
11:37
being let by those Victorian surgeons metaphorically.
11:41
So that's that. I had a blurred vision.
11:43
I was like, well, that's just age.
11:44
That's just, I probably need reading glasses, all this sort
11:46
of stuff. And I hadn't had a period for
11:49
seven months, but I was like, well, again, I've had lots of
11:52
fertility treatment, Maybe that's the issue, all of that.
11:55
And I was having several hot flashes a day and during the
12:00
night. And I was like, well, obviously
12:02
I am, That's a symptom of perimenopause.
12:04
But I'd had them before and they'd gone away again.
12:06
I was like, it'll probably be fine.
12:07
I'll sit it out. And then I thought, actually,
12:11
these hot flashes are really unpleasant.
12:12
So I am going to go and see a gynecologist, which I did.
12:15
And she was amazing. She said to me, are you
12:18
experiencing? And then she listed the things
12:20
that I've been experiencing but I hadn't put in one category and
12:23
one of them was blurred vision. I was like, yes, I have.
12:26
And she said, and have you experienced any dryness, you
12:29
know, down there? I was like no, absolutely not.
12:31
Like 0 complaints. And she said, well, we can't
12:36
judge hormones from blood tests because I'd also had a blood
12:39
test from a male GP and I was like, no, your hormones are.
12:41
Fine, of course, yeah. And so we have to go over
12:43
symptoms. She's like, looking at these
12:45
symptoms, I have absolutely no doubt that you are
12:47
perimenopausal, if not menopausal.
12:49
And is your sleep affected? I said no, no.
12:52
I have actually always been a very good sleeper.
12:54
She's like, but the hot flashes are waking you up.
12:56
I said yes. She said, so your CBA is being
12:59
afraid. I was like, OK, yeah,
13:00
technically. And then I went next door
13:03
because she taught me through the options, and I decided to
13:06
get fitted with the coil. And so she examined my vagina.
13:10
She's like, you are on the verge of atrophy.
13:14
I was like, how dare you? She said, we don't want you
13:18
getting Utis. I mean, your urethra is
13:20
dangerously exposed. And I genuinely, I had not
13:25
noticed. And she said this fascinating
13:27
thing that has always stuck with me.
13:30
She said, in my experience, women who've gone through
13:32
fertility treatment, they tend to minimise their symptoms
13:35
because they're so used to feeling dreadful on hormones.
13:39
And she was also the first person who said to me, you've
13:41
had HRT before when you were having your rounds of IVF, that
13:45
was HRT. And it all started making a kind
13:48
of sense to me. And then of course, I got fitted
13:52
with a coil. I had my Eastern gel.
13:54
Within three days, my hot flashes are gone and I was fit
13:57
and my vision had actually got better.
13:59
I had an eye test afterwards and I'm so grateful for that
14:03
interaction. But even me having had these
14:06
conversations, knowing what was being talked about, even I
14:11
needed that help. Well, it's the whole thing about
14:13
joining the dots. And I think we don't do it
14:15
enough as as women as patients, but also as doctors as well.
14:19
And you know, I'm staggered by the number of women I see have
14:22
come from fertility clinics and some of them have been
14:25
successful, some of them haven't.
14:26
But lots of women have had round after round after round of IVF
14:30
and they've often had mental health symptoms.
14:33
But the anxiety, the low mood is because they can't get pregnant.
14:37
Some of it will be, but what about their hormones?
14:40
But they've also had physical symptoms as well, sometimes skin
14:43
changes, palpitations, muscle joint pains.
14:46
But the focus has been on becoming pregnant.
14:50
And I know when I sat at my clinic about 8 years ago, I
14:54
phoned them. I won't tell you who somebody
14:57
who runs a lot of fertility clinics, because I wanted to
15:01
ask, ask him the what education do you give to women coming to
15:05
your clinic, especially those with recurrent miscarriages or
15:07
problems with the IVF, about hormones and perimenopause,
15:10
because they're more likely to have hormonal issues.
15:13
A lot of women will have low progesterone and these hormones,
15:17
we know because they're natural, can improve fertility.
15:20
So he said, what do you, oh, we don't do anything.
15:22
It's not our domain. We're fertility.
15:24
He was getting quite cross on the phone.
15:25
I said, but I do a lot of education.
15:27
I do a lot for free for healthcare professionals, for
15:29
women. And he said don't give me that
15:31
you. I don't believe that if you're
15:33
doing private medicine, it will be about making money and I.
15:36
Said this is the man in charge of several potential Yeah, I
15:38
said. Wow.
15:39
I said, no, I haven't phoned you for any financial advice.
15:42
I have phoned you because I'm worried about these women.
15:44
They have nowhere to go. And and I remember it very
15:46
distinctly because my husband came in the study and he was
15:49
whispering are you OK? Because it was a bit of a
15:51
hostile conversation and I was really shocked.
15:54
He said, don't give me all that. He said, you might be saying
15:57
you're doing it for free now, but you'll change and it'll be
15:59
different. And I said, no, I, I went into
16:01
medicine to help as many people as possible.
16:04
And I was really shocked. But we see it time and time
16:07
again. And, you know, I'm not slurring
16:10
fertility clinics with the same brush because there are those
16:13
that are amazing and there are those that seem to do a lot of
16:17
tests, give a lot of treatment. And they're not even asking
16:19
women about their lifestyle or anything.
16:22
It's all about the hormones. And it's sort of, but the women
16:26
are just sort of left a bit, you know, and it might not be any of
16:29
their symptoms are due to hormonal changes, but the stats
16:33
are they're more likely to have an earlier perimenopause or
16:35
menopause. So it would have been, I don't
16:37
know if you had any information about look, these are the
16:39
symptoms to look out for. No, now that you say that, I
16:44
hadn't. And I agree with you that there
16:45
are some incredible fertility practitioners out there.
16:49
When I was going through it. So I spent 12 years having
16:53
unsuccessful fertility treatments and recurrent
16:55
miscarriages. And so I had lots of different
16:59
experiences of treatment and I went to lots of different
17:01
clinics. Overwhelmingly, I was seen by
17:04
men. And again, there are some
17:07
wonderful male medical practitioners out there.
17:10
My father is one of them. He's a retired general surgeon.
17:14
But it's more difficult for a man to understand if they have
17:20
never been through a period or a miscarriage, how to communicate
17:25
or, or how that experience might shape you.
17:30
You can understand on one level and you can practice empathy,
17:34
but you will never fully know or embody it literally.
17:38
And it was so noticeable to me that the one time actually, I
17:41
was treated by a woman twice. And both times it was revelatory
17:47
to me. And the first woman I was
17:50
treated by, she runs a fertility clinic in Greece that I'm sure
17:54
many of your listeners might have been to.
17:57
And I had a bicornial uterus, which it means you know this,
18:01
but it's a heart-shaped wound. So you have a septum at the top.
18:05
And although not enough research has been done into it, because
18:08
not enough research is done into miscarriage, full stop, there
18:12
are some schools of thought that believe it could trigger early
18:15
miscarriage, which was always my issue.
18:17
And I had always been spoken to by male fertility doctors as if
18:24
it was something that either, oh, well, we don't need to
18:28
bother about that, it's probably not that, or it was a kind of
18:31
deformity that, you know, I just had to grin and bear it.
18:34
But that was it was it was a failure.
18:36
I felt that I internalized sort of bodily failure.
18:39
And Penny was the first person who described my womb to me
18:44
using really compassionate terminology.
18:47
And she said I remember it forever.
18:50
It was the first phone call I had with her.
18:52
She said your womb is like a beautiful room and it's got
18:55
these two pillars and it's got this wall here.
18:59
And we just think for a baby to be comfortable, we might
19:03
renovate it slightly and we might.
19:05
It was a lovely. Language it was.
19:07
Such lovely language because it didn't feel that it was my
19:12
responsibility alone. And that was very noticeable to
19:16
me. And, and one of the things I'm
19:17
so passionate about is not only having these conversations, as
19:23
we said at the very beginning, because so many women and men
19:25
feel so alone in this journey, but also giving voice to the
19:31
female experience in a way that makes other women feel
19:35
compassionately understood. And I think I bring that, I hope
19:39
I bring that into every kind of work that I do.
19:40
So it's not just the podcast, it's also my writing.
19:43
And I've got this new novel out one of us, and it was the first
19:47
time I had written a perimenopausal character when I
19:51
was going through perimenopause and I and it made me realise
19:55
that I haven't seen it that much in fiction.
19:58
No, it's not been spoken about enough, or if it is, it's been
20:01
trivialised or almost made fun of.
20:04
A bit like PMS, you know, it's a bit of butter jokes.
20:07
Yes. But I want to talk about this
20:09
one of us are very lucky because I have read it and I really
20:13
enjoyed it. But I also felt sad and I felt
20:16
frustrated for some of the characters.
20:18
Some of them I wanted to just take them home and mother them.
20:20
Some of them are just like just be honest with each other.
20:23
And I'm as a doctor, like one of the first things I learned I had
20:28
some really great trainers was about listening and believing
20:32
people. And it's belief.
20:34
And I'm very and I've done it with my children.
20:36
I've always said to them, if you get yourselves into trouble, I
20:39
won't judge you. I'll help you.
20:40
But be honest. This through the book, I'm not
20:45
going to give anything away, but there's a lot of people that
20:47
aren't honest with each other. But there are also one female
20:51
character in particular has tried to be really honest and
20:54
not being believed. And that saddens me even more
20:58
actually, because as women, why aren't we believed?
21:02
Why aren't we believed by our doctors?
21:04
Why aren't we believed by our friends or family or relatives?
21:06
You know, this was really awful what happened to her.
21:10
And she tried to tell someone in her family and they didn't
21:14
believe her. Yes.
21:15
And that changed probably the shape of her future.
21:17
Didn't. It yes, I'm very interested in
21:20
the courage of truth tellers in systems that don't reward that.
21:25
And so one of us is about a family system that doesn't
21:29
reward that, which is this aristocratic elite privileged
21:34
Fitzmaurice family embedded in English tradition.
21:40
So that idea of not being honest in your communication is very
21:44
much part of their social class. And the character you are
21:49
talking about strives to tell the truth, but her family
21:54
members don't want to be confronted with the truth
21:56
because it means that they would have to confront with honesty
21:59
who they really are. And I think the reason that so
22:03
many women in this book aren't believed is firstly because of
22:09
the systems. And it's also a political
22:11
system. So one of us has this political
22:13
theme running through it as well.
22:14
Like why do we keep falling in love with the people who damage
22:17
us and why do we keep electing them?
22:19
Yes, but I think the one of the reasons that women aren't
22:25
believed is because we have been so conditioned by the patriarchy
22:28
not to believe ourselves first. So there's a sort of lack of
22:32
self worth and self belief that means that when we do gather up
22:37
the courage to tell the truth, we're still doubting ourselves
22:42
and we can crumble very quickly. And the character that you
22:45
mentioned, the reason we're not talking about her by name is
22:47
because we don't want to give any spoilers, but she is a woman
22:53
of a certain age. So we meet her in this book when
22:57
she's 5051. And that age really fascinates
23:01
me. I'm 46, so I'm a Gen.
23:02
X slash elder millennial. But I think for Gen.
23:05
X women, we have been given so much mixed messaging and there
23:12
is so much embedded trauma in what we went through simply to
23:18
grow up. And I think that this character
23:22
is also struggling with all of that.
23:24
There's a there's a fundamental question of identity.
23:26
Who is she if she doesn't belong?
23:29
And very sadly, her family has made her into the black sheep.
23:33
So she's grappling, trying to find belonging, and that's
23:37
ultimately the path of her destruction.
23:39
Yeah, and there's a bit in it where there are some drugs
23:44
involved and a lifestyle that, you know, wasn't great.
23:49
And we see it a lot in all sorts of people.
23:51
I did a survey looking at addictive behaviours in women
23:56
who are perimenopausal, menopausal.
23:58
So we looked at alcohol, gambling, drugs.
24:01
And I was just rereading it last night and it was a free text
24:05
comments that are the ones that really struck me.
24:08
And one lady said, I've, I've never taken cocaine before, but
24:13
I needed to get some sleep and I needed to get some of these
24:15
intrusive thoughts out of my head.
24:18
My doctor didn't help me. I didn't know where to turn to
24:21
and I had to escape from this cage of doom.
24:24
It's really, and you, this cage of doom is something that people
24:29
do feel very trapped in their bodies when the hormones aren't
24:32
right. Not everybody, but some people
24:34
get catastrophic mental health symptoms.
24:37
And, and I've seen it so often. There's no pattern recognition.
24:41
There's not always, it's not always people that have had
24:43
mental health issues. Some people it's gradual.
24:45
Some people they literally fall off a Cliff.
24:47
And a lot of people have PMDD. But it's, it's like as a doctor,
24:52
as a society, we medical society, we are failing women if
24:55
they're having to go to Class A drugs to treat a hormonal
25:00
problem that they can't get help for.
25:01
Yes. And this character, I'm sure,
25:04
didn't do it for that reason. But she was 50, Yeah.
25:08
So she was either menopausal or perimenopausal.
25:12
You know, and I really love that you pick up on that.
25:15
Yeah. And I do think that her
25:19
addiction absolutely stems from what you're describing, which is
25:25
fear of being left alone with how you're feeling.
25:28
Yes. And if how you're feeling is
25:33
suicidal because of your hormones, or if how you're
25:36
feeling is not believed by your own family when you tell them
25:40
this awful thing has happened to you, then I can completely
25:44
understand the impulse that you have to blot it out.
25:47
And actually, you're just making me think of someone I know who
25:50
has ADHD and struggles so much with the aliveness of their
26:00
thoughts that they turned ketamine for a period in their
26:04
life because it's quote UN quote chilled them out.
26:09
And obviously there's also ketamine being used now for
26:11
depression therapy and all that, but I do.
26:15
Also nakashib ladder, yes. I Yes.
26:18
Oh good. I.
26:19
Know when I say it to someone, I know it's not actually me.
26:23
Oh yes, it does. And that was made clear to this
26:26
person and but it didn't really make it.
26:31
It's so obvious like how much pain people are in and what they
26:35
seek to do to numb that pain. I.
26:37
Mean we had over 1000 responses for this survey, but a lot of
26:40
people smoking Ganapis again just to try and calm their
26:43
brain. And I'm very interested in the
26:45
role of hormones in the brain, but the brain in general, how it
26:48
works. You know, there's so many things
26:50
that can affect our brain and there's so much that especially
26:55
in women, it's about us having trauma, us having personality
27:00
disorders, us having all these different conditions.
27:03
I don't hear about men with their trauma.
27:05
You know, we all have had traumatic experiences, some
27:08
worse than others. And of course it's going to
27:11
affect our cortisol and affect our progesterone and everything
27:15
else. But it doesn't mean we just
27:17
blame that and not look at other reasons why we can help people
27:20
feel better. Because women have just left on
27:22
their own a lot. And I was just writing something
27:26
recently, well, at the weekend and about women being called
27:30
malingerers, They're more likely to, this is by doctors.
27:34
This is what term they use. You know, these heart sync
27:36
patients, women are more likely to attend a doctor.
27:40
And 1 of this was in a medical journalist said because they
27:43
have more time because the men are busy working.
27:45
Of course. Wait, sorry.
27:46
Recently. Yeah, well, it's late in the
27:48
last 10 years. Oh my goodness.
27:50
Still, we taught this at medical school and it still filters down
27:54
that women and it's like, no, every woman that comes to my
27:58
surgery and they you know, is AGP for many years as well.
28:01
They, they have a genuine need. And just because I can't help
28:05
them if I can't diagnose something, it doesn't mean
28:08
they're making up their symptoms.
28:10
I've never met someone who's made-up their symptoms.
28:13
You know, like your blurred vision, you would have gone to
28:15
the, if you had gone to an optician or an ophthalmologist,
28:18
they would have said it's normal.
28:19
And then if no one had thought about hormones, you would be
28:23
thinking, well, maybe I am making it.
28:24
Maybe it's stress, but I, you know what I mean.
28:27
And you can see how this happens more and more with women.
28:31
And that's where the power of being able to educate ourselves
28:33
in different ways is really important, actually.
28:36
Definitely. Because we're not always getting
28:38
it from conventional ways. Yeah.
28:40
And I think that's also, I'm not meaning to bring it back to this
28:44
book the whole time, but I do think that's the power of
28:46
fiction because I obviously write non fiction as well, which
28:49
I really enjoy for different reasons.
28:52
But the wonderful thing about fiction is that it is a vehicle
28:56
for the imagination, which sparks empathy.
29:00
And you can use it to examine issues that a reader might not
29:06
have first hand experience of. But if you're doing your job as
29:09
an author, you can help them understand it.
29:12
So my previous novel, Magpie, I deliberately chose to write
29:16
about fertility, but I wanted to make it into a riveting, sort of
29:21
psychological, psychologically thrilling book.
29:25
I wouldn't describe it as a thriller, very.
29:27
There aren't any dead bodies. But I think it, I hope it's
29:30
compelling and there's a big twist in it.
29:33
Which my husband told me by the way.
29:34
So annoying. He listens to books and I read
29:38
to. Read it at the same time.
29:40
Well, I didn't know he'd read it, you see, because he's he.
29:42
This is in the cart. So when I had your book and I
29:44
was so that's really good. And then he tells me that and
29:47
I'm like, have you seen that I'm this far forward?
29:50
So I hadn't. Well, I'm so appreciative that
29:53
you read it, though. That's great because so many men
29:56
don't read books by women, which is also frustrating.
29:59
So thank you, Mr. Newsome. But yes, I wanted to make it so
30:05
compelling for someone to read that.
30:06
Then they would read it and along the way they would learn
30:10
what miscarriage might be like. And, and I'm but I really think
30:15
fiction can be so powerful for that.
30:17
And this is great because it's not actually, I'm not throwing
30:21
anything, but it's not all about menopause or perimenopause.
30:23
In fact, I hope it's. Funny too.
30:24
Oh, I. Love, I love this, but it's very
30:26
relatable. But it's just great to weave in
30:29
and think. And obviously the way I've
30:31
thought about hormones affecting these characters, they're even
30:33
different to the way that you have thought.
30:35
But that's the beauty of fiction.
30:36
Exactly what we want exactly. I want to see.
30:39
It's a film though, I really. Want to So did I?
30:41
Well, so One of Us is a companion piece to an early
30:44
novel I wrote called The Party and the Party is actually being
30:48
adapted. So that's very exciting.
30:50
Great. And so hopefully one of us will
30:53
be as well. But you don't need to have read
30:55
The Party to read One of Us. It's a stand alone.
30:57
No, it's. It's just brilliant.
30:59
So I'm really grateful for you coming, but I always end on
31:04
three take home tips. So this is the hardest bit
31:06
sometimes. Three things that you think
31:10
going forwards will make it easier for women to be believed.
31:14
Number one, know that you are never alone in whatever you're
31:20
experiencing. I promise you, the thing you
31:23
think of as the most personal will turn out to have universal
31:27
resonance. If you can take that first brave
31:30
step of choosing to share, I promise you that that is so
31:38
powerful. And the more women know that,
31:41
and the more that we use our voices, the more we end up being
31:45
believed. I love that.
31:48
I think the second thing is what you said Louise, about you in
31:53
all of your years in medicine as AGP have never met anyone who is
31:58
making up their symptoms. So if you are on the receiving
32:03
end of a woman telling you something that is clearly
32:06
painful to her to share, I would ask that your default position
32:14
is belief until and if that's proven wrong, I think your
32:19
default position, and I think this in all areas of life,
32:21
actually your default position should be generosity of spirit
32:26
and should be extending the benefit of that generosity and
32:31
that belief. So that's the second thing I
32:32
would say. It all comes back to listening
32:36
really, doesn't it? Totally.
32:39
So I think the third thing I would say is both listening and
32:45
acting. As an interviewer, I know that
32:49
the most powerful thing I can do is not to ask the question is to
32:52
listen. And that's why I don't.
32:56
When I do my podcast, I don't have a pre prepared list of
32:58
questions. I have various areas I want to
33:00
discuss, but I'm always aware that someone might say something
33:04
that is interesting and unexpected.
33:07
And if I'm listening carefully, if I'm actively listening, it
33:10
will take the conversation somewhere it needs to go.
33:14
And then there's the sense that once you have listened to
33:17
someone's story, acting on that in one small way to make things
33:24
better for the next person, that can set off a really meaningful
33:28
chain reaction. Yeah.
33:30
And that's so important. And thank you so much for
33:33
sharing because listening and believing are so important and
33:39
it's happening, but it needs to happen more.
33:41
Yes. But thank you so much.
33:43
It's been great. Thank.
33:44
You, I've loved it. I've learnt so much.
33:46
Great. Thank you for having.
33:47
Me. Thank you for coming.