Latest / The Dr Louise Newson Podcast / 30 - Challenging the invisibility of menopausal women with Liz Earle MBE

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30 - Challenging the invisibility of menopausal women with Liz Earle MBE · The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

• 0:00
  As many of you know, I'm passionate about helping women
• 0:03
  make positive changes for their long term health and well-being.
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  Just head to vivobarefoot.com and give them a try.
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  Your body will thank you. So Liz Earl is my guest today.
• 0:55
  We talk about hormones, we talk about keeping healthy and
• 0:59
  preventing diseases, and we talk about how we can keep well for
• 1:03
  as long as possible. See the difference between
• 1:06
  health span and lifespan. It's a great episode and I hope
• 1:09
  it will really inspire you to look after yourself, So welcome
• 1:14
  back, Liz. It's nice to be here.
• 1:16
  It's really nice. So we're doing it in real life,
• 1:18
  in person. I know, not just online.
• 1:21
  In a great studio, so yeah, there's lots to talk about.
• 1:24
  I feel like I need to talk quickly because it's only half
• 1:26
  an hour, but you'll come back so it's fine.
• 1:30
  Thank you. I can't remember how long I've
• 1:33
  known you for, but it feels like quite a few years now.
• 1:36
  Is it nearly 10 years? It feels.
• 1:38
  About that, I think so, because people say to me when did you
• 1:40
  start HRT? And I just started obviously.
• 1:44
  Well, I think I met you. Before I was on HRT.
• 1:47
  So that and I'm now 62, so it must be more than 10 years
• 1:52
  because I think I started my HRT around sort of 5150.
• 1:55
  Two. Yeah, because you'd written or
• 1:57
  you'd sort of reactivated an old book, an old book HRT with all
• 2:01
  the. Wrong information.
• 2:03
  And then very luckily, one of my researchers found you, who said
• 2:06
  no, no, no, this is this. Is all.
• 2:08
  Do you know what? I was so scared speaking to you
• 2:12
  because, well, you get, you've got to know me now.
• 2:15
  But I'm really honest, and I needed to be really honest with
• 2:19
  you that. It was and tell me.
• 2:20
  The wrong information. And what I really respected
• 2:24
  about you is that you really listened and but you didn't just
• 2:27
  believe me, you went off and did your own research.
• 2:29
  And that's really important because there are a lot of
• 2:32
  people who well, especially over the last 10 years who are on
• 2:36
  this so-called menopause bandwagon who just learned
• 2:39
  things, pick things up. They got their own agenda.
• 2:41
  But you, you didn't say, oh, yes, Louise, let's just change
• 2:46
  it because you've said it. You've said no.
• 2:47
  Show me the papers. Yeah.
• 2:49
  Introduce me to some other people.
• 2:50
  Let me hear it from other people as well.
• 2:52
  Yeah. Which has been brilliant.
• 2:54
  So. Well, it was a real eye opener.
• 2:56
  It was a real journey. And I think, you know, for me,
• 2:58
  all my life actually, I've really tried to campaign and
• 3:03
  rail against injustice. You know, whether it's, I
• 3:06
  started a charity, I sit on the board of the Centre for Social
• 3:08
  Justice, which kind of, as the name suggests, you know, is all
• 3:11
  about social justice. And when you see things that are
• 3:15
  so obviously wrong, particularly things that affect real people,
• 3:19
  especially real women, real midlife women, you know, that
• 3:22
  you really relate to as a midlife older woman, and then
• 3:28
  staggeringly, things don't seem to change.
• 3:30
  I mean, that is the real frustration of it, isn't it?
• 3:32
  Sitting here all those years later, you would have expected
• 3:34
  it to people to wake up and go, oh, well, yes, of course we need
• 3:37
  to change this. Of course, we need to have more
• 3:39
  education and more awareness and more availability for women and
• 3:42
  better healthcare for for particularly for older women.
• 3:45
  Because I remember sitting in the kitchen of your studios, You
• 3:48
  know, we were filming a Facebook Live, weren't we, many years
• 3:52
  ago. And then I came again and
• 3:55
  recorded a podcast with you. And I felt like I had this
• 3:58
  explosion of words. I don't if you remember, I was
• 4:00
  like, Liz, I've been seeing people in the clinic and they've
• 4:03
  been turned away. They've been given
• 4:05
  antidepressants. I hear all these suits because
• 4:06
  my clinic had only really just started and I was on my own and
• 4:10
  I was like, this, this is awful. This is awful.
• 4:12
  And I remember it was before you'd sort of started this big
• 4:15
  community that you have now. I remember because you're always
• 4:18
  so lovely and calm and I always feel a bit like chaotic and.
• 4:22
  And you were like, yes, that's interesting.
• 4:24
  But I don't think you realise, and I didn't even realise the
• 4:27
  enormity of the problem of women not being believed and listened
• 4:32
  to. Yeah.
• 4:32
  And not being able to access hormones.
• 4:35
  And you know, a lot of my work has been educating people about
• 4:38
  the difference, as we did with you, between the natural
• 4:41
  hormones and. The she's not even just, you
• 4:43
  know, getting over the whole scary issue of hormones itself.
• 4:46
  It's then saying, well, they are very different.
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  Yes, totally synthetic, totally identical.
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  And so we've worked together separately in lots of different
• 4:55
  ways, but a lot of it is about empowering women and enabling
• 5:00
  them to make choices about their health, their lifestyle,
• 5:03
  everything. And there are some women who are
• 5:06
  really fortunate who can go to their NHSGP.
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  Yeah. They can get all three hormones
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  and vaginal hormones if they need them.
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  And then their next sort of phase is looking at their
• 5:18
  exercise, their nutrition. Yes.
• 5:19
  Everything then slots in in an amazing way, yeah.
• 5:23
  But yeah, that's true. I mean, I, you know, I work a
• 5:25
  lot with well-being and lifestyle.
• 5:27
  And you know, I always say it's not just your hormones.
• 5:29
  You've got to look at what you're eating and you've got to,
• 5:31
  you know, lift more weights and prioritise your sleep and, you
• 5:34
  know, have purpose in your life and all of that.
• 5:35
  But unless you get the underpinning of the hormones,
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  how then do you have the the warmth, the oomph and the the
• 5:42
  mojo to actually go and do that? And you know it for me, you
• 5:46
  know, I'm far more active now than I ever was.
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  I lift heavy weights. I run, which I never did before.
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  I never would run anywhere, not even for a bus, You know, my 40s
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  or 50s. Yeah.
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  And it wouldn't. I just wouldn't feel capable of
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  doing it. And I I, I mean, it drives my
• 6:00
  boyfriend mad. You know, we've just come back
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  from a long drive. And, you know, we, we go through
• 6:04
  these small towns and I see older women who are stooped and
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  hunched and clearly in pain. We know walking with a mobility
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  aid. And I just look at them, my
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  heart breaks for them because I think I, I know how much you're
• 6:17
  hurting physically and emotionally and mentally, and
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  you've probably got raging UTI's and your joints ache and you're
• 6:24
  anxious and you're, you know, scared to be outdoors.
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  Because we know that, you know, so much of our, our brain
• 6:31
  capacity disappears with our declining hormones.
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  And I I rage with injustice for these women to think how they've
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  been let down and are continuing to to be let down.
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  Absolutely. And and it's a global problem.
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  It's not auk problem. We're living so much longer,
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  which is great, but actually that whole health span lifespan
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  is completely different. And we know that the last 10
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  years of a woman's age is often in poor health and that's often
• 6:58
  because of the inflammatory diseases.
• 7:00
  So osteoporosis that you say with this curvature, heart
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  disease, diabetes, non alcoholic fat, liver disease, cancers,
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  Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, they're all
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  inflammatory condition, autoimmune diseases, but no
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  one's joining the dots really properly and thinking about the
• 7:18
  role of hormones and all of that.
• 7:21
  But we want to keep well. And that's what you do so well,
• 7:24
  you personally, but also to educate.
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  People, I feel really strongly about it.
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  You know, my, my last book, a better second-half was because
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  at hitting the age of 60, I felt happier and stronger and fitter
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  and more capable than ever in my life more than in my 30s,
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  forties, 50s. And, you know, I, I fully intend
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  to live 120. So I am physically hopefully
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  halfway through, barring the proverbial bus outside that
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  might catch me. But you know, in, in terms of
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  health span, it's about living well for longer.
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  So those last 10 years that you mentioned are not spent in pain
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  and incapacitated, immobile, loss of cognitive function,
• 8:02
  etcetera. So we are living longer.
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  Like it or not, you know, modern medicine is keeping us alive.
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  But how do we do that then, and not be in pain?
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  And how to be mobile and independent and purposeful?
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  Yeah, a lot of my thinking time and some of my work is thinking
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  about the harms of denying women evidence based hormonal
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  treatments. And I'm really careful when I
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  say hormones because I think we need to be really specific about
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  the hormones, progesterone, estradiol and testosterone.
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  And I use those words really carefully because progesterone
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  is the natural progesterone, as you know, not synthetic
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  progesterone. Estradiol is the good form of
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  estrogen and testosterone. It has to be the proper
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  testosterone, not a synthetic form.
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  But those 3 hormones are really hard for most menopausal women
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  to access. Like the majority of menopausal
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  women in the UK and in every country are not able to access
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  it, which is just scandalous really.
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  I think what's really shocked me over the years is the fact that
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  so little research was done for women, you know, even on
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  mainstream drugs, you know, they're on, on white middle-aged
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  men of a certain age. And actually anybody who falls
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  outside that parameter is, is excluded.
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  And, you know, we know that women are not just small men.
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  Chromes only. Every cell in our body is, is
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  different. Our hormones are different, our
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  pain pathways are different, our fat distribute.
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  I mean, you can just go on and I don't need to tell you.
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  You're the medic, not me, But you know, the fact that so
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  little attention was paid to female health care and then you
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  factor in the ageism. So it's not just a gender
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  inequality, but then it get ageist as well with it and it's
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  just as if older women we just don't really matter.
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  No, no, you. Know we've served our function,
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  we've procreated maybe or not. We've been a caregiver of, you
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  know, whoever is around us at work or at home and actually
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  it's time to just go and just be quiet.
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  And it, it's, it's just so wrong.
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  I rage all the time. Sorry, I've used that word rage
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  so many times. Haven't I today already?
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  But it is because it is this whole invisible woman.
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  But actually we are like not really important for society.
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  But it's also a personal thing. Even if I had no dependence, I
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  didn't have a job. I was living on my own in
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  wherever I still want to keep healthy.
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  And it's a choice thing. Yes, they I choose whether I get
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  up earlier to do yoga or not. You choose whether you do
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  weights or not. You choose whether to run in the
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  park or use a machine. We choose what we eat.
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  Yes, we choose whether we smoke or not.
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  But somehow the choice about having hormones, it's not even
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  a. And if a younger woman can, she
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  can choose whether or not she wants to be on the pill.
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  Yeah, which is a synthetic hormone with far more health
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  risks. And that suggests, do you go to
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  your GP or, you know, possibly even your pharmacist, certainly
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  in some countries. And it's just given out without
• 10:55
  a thought, which I find much of a thought.
• 10:57
  Well, it's true though. I mean, you've got daughters,
• 10:59
  I've got daughters. They can get any type of
• 11:02
  contraceptive. And why?
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  Can't I have my natural hormones in a lower dose in a safer form?
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  It But how much is the narrative changing?
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  Because from what I see on my social media, Instagram
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  particularly is my main kind of point of contact with people.
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  I get messages the whole time and comments the whole time from
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  women even now going to GPS primarily and just not
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  accessing, not even a trial. Because I'll often comment and
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  say, well, I'm not a medic, but this is the data, these, this is
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  the evidence. Why don't you ask for for a
• 11:32
  three or six months trial and see if your symptoms improve?
• 11:35
  I'm always recommending the balance app because it's free
• 11:38
  and it has a great checklist and you can it fast tracks your
• 11:41
  appointment, doesn't it? To your GP because you can say
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  I've got this, this, this and this because that's the problem,
• 11:46
  isn't it? With AGP.
• 11:47
  If you say, oh, I've got achy knees immediately, you'll start
• 11:51
  talking to a rheumatologist. Or if you know if you have
• 11:54
  anxiety immediately it's a psychiatric condition and it's
• 11:57
  antidepressant. Whereas if you can go in with
• 12:00
  achy joints and dry eyes and UTI's and hot flashes and
• 12:05
  whatever, then it might be, oh, let's talk about hormones
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  straight away. And it's interesting.
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  I am complete Marmite in the medical community, so there's
• 12:13
  lots of doctors that really, really thank me for the work.
• 12:16
  Especially balance that because they say it really helps our
• 12:18
  consultation because people come in with their health report,
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  they've monitored their symptoms, any periods, and they
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  literally sit down and say, look, I think I'm
• 12:26
  perimenopausal, look at these symptoms, can I help?
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  Whereas other people have said to me, Louise, your work has got
• 12:33
  to stop because what you're doing is educating people.
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  And then now they all think they've got a hormonal issue.
• 12:38
  We see women in their 20s, thirties, think that hormones
• 12:40
  are going to help their sleep, they're going to help their
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  headaches, their joint pains. It's ridiculous.
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  And I'm there obviously really annoying saying why is it
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  ridiculous? I don't understand because it
• 12:50
  could be related. It could be.
• 12:51
  And actually, you know, as you know, I see a lot of younger
• 12:54
  women who have hormonal changes and they often need hormones for
• 12:58
  those days where the hormones are changing and reducing,
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  especially before their periods. And so I think every woman who
• 13:05
  comes in to a consultation, the question should be, could any of
• 13:10
  this be related to your hormones, you know, frozen
• 13:13
  shoulder? Could it be related to your
• 13:15
  hormones? Dry eyes?
• 13:17
  Burning mouth syndrome? Well for me it was my I had a
• 13:19
  hearing issue and I had tinnitus.
• 13:21
  Which is really common. Yeah, in my early 50s and late
• 13:25
  40s, early 50s, and I had this constant kind of faint ringing.
• 13:28
  And I was researching it and it was just like, oh, there's not
• 13:31
  much you can do about it. I thought, Oh my gosh, I'm just
• 13:32
  going to have to live with this. And then I've only, I've been on
• 13:35
  HRT maybe for about 18 months and I suddenly realised my
• 13:40
  tinnitus has gone. And then I looked into it and I
• 13:43
  think we spoke and it was like, yes, we've got estrogen
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  receptors on our ears. And yet none of the audiologists
• 13:50
  had ever said anything. And the same with dry mouth
• 13:53
  syndrome. I was talking to a dentist the
• 13:54
  other day saying, well, you know, I bet you see lots of, you
• 13:57
  know, you can pick up lots of hormonal changes, can't you,
• 14:00
  because you've got lots of middle-aged women sitting in
• 14:02
  your chair. And he said, Oh, well, they
• 14:04
  don't teach us anything about that in dentistry.
• 14:07
  Doesn't it just doesn't make sense?
• 14:09
  But I had palpitations when I was before I had Lucy, so it was
• 14:13
  probably about 35 and they were quite bad actually, especially
• 14:17
  at night time. Obviously hormone levels are
• 14:19
  lower at night, but I didn't join the dots.
• 14:22
  And it would sometimes actually wake me from my sleep 'cause I
• 14:25
  sometimes get chest pain, sometimes shortness of breath,
• 14:28
  which are red flags. You know, they're concerning
• 14:30
  symptoms if you've got, yes, palpitations.
• 14:33
  But it was more that I was missing a beat.
• 14:34
  There was a long pause and then suddenly my heart would beat and
• 14:37
  it felt like my whole chest was, you know, just in pain.
• 14:41
  And I'd sometimes wake pulled up and say, look, I, I think I'm
• 14:43
  gonna have to go to casualty. I feel really ill when I was
• 14:46
  like, no, this is stupid, it will pass, it will pass.
• 14:48
  Maybe I'm a bit anxious, maybe I'm a bit depressed.
• 14:50
  And anyway, then I went to see a cardiologist, obviously wired
• 14:54
  up, had all these tests, everything was normal, but no
• 14:58
  one really said to me. And they all melted away when I
• 15:01
  was pregnant with Lucy, of course, because my hormone
• 15:03
  levels were high. And then even when they came
• 15:07
  back, I then started to get other symptoms and it was easy
• 15:09
  to join the dots. But just someone saying, do you
• 15:13
  think it could be hormonal? Yes.
• 15:15
  Let's put it back to the women a bit and ask them, because women
• 15:18
  are quite intuitive, aren't they?
• 15:20
  Definitely. And I think it it, it's actually
• 15:22
  connecting those, those all those different symptoms.
• 15:25
  You know, I think we, you know, I grew up thinking it was just
• 15:27
  about a hot flash, yes, and a night sweat.
• 15:30
  And then it would pass. Yeah, you know, that that's also
• 15:33
  the big, the big reveal that no, it may not pass.
• 15:36
  And I think it was the achy joints and the dry eyes and the,
• 15:41
  you know, the anxiety and the headaches.
• 15:42
  I mean, again, I, I haven't got any painkillers in my bag.
• 15:45
  And and I look back to when I was in my mid 40s, I would never
• 15:49
  be without a whole stash of ibuprofen in my back because I
• 15:53
  would really get a lot of headaches.
• 15:54
  And it was difficult time of life.
• 15:56
  I was selling the beauty company, you know, Rocky
• 15:58
  marriage, all of that. And there were lots of other
• 15:59
  factors. And I think that gets blurred,
• 16:01
  doesn't it? Of course it does.
• 16:02
  So we, we can't, you know, you have to kind of, you know, take
• 16:06
  that out. But, you know, I wonder how you
• 16:09
  cope with it, you know, because you say that you, you, you're
• 16:13
  quite Marmite for the medical community.
• 16:15
  You know, you get a huge amount of praise.
• 16:17
  And I always read the comments on your Instagram and there are
• 16:19
  so many, literally hundreds, thousands of women who say you
• 16:22
  have saved my life, which is, yeah, just a phenomenal.
• 16:26
  And you know that. I'm sure that keeps you going.
• 16:28
  But then there are there are a lot of rock throwers, and that's
• 16:32
  hard. It is really hard Liz and I I
• 16:35
  someone actually a couple of people in my research team last
• 16:38
  week said have you always been quite naughty and disruptive?
• 16:41
  I said sorry. I said I've never been naughty
• 16:45
  like I've always conformed like I used to get form prize.
• 16:49
  I was a real girly swat. I'd always just be under
• 16:51
  everyone's radar and do my best. And then I went into medicine to
• 16:55
  help people. They know.
• 16:56
  That sounds a bit cheesy, but I'm not from a medical
• 16:59
  background. No one in my family's ever been
• 17:01
  a medical doctor before. And I wanted to become a doctor
• 17:04
  ever since I could, you know, walk and talk really.
• 17:07
  And but I did it because I wanted to help people feel
• 17:10
  better. And, you know, even after my
• 17:13
  father died, it was seemed so wrong that someone so young
• 17:17
  could die even with good medical care.
• 17:20
  So it just really drove me. And I feel sometimes, and I
• 17:24
  think maybe I'm a bit older and braver, but when these doctors
• 17:27
  push back, I feel like either don't know whether to laugh or
• 17:31
  cry because they think, do you not care about the people that
• 17:33
  you see? And then when that we get
• 17:36
  letters of complaint, which we often do, to say, how dare you
• 17:38
  give progesterone to someone who's had a hysterectomy and
• 17:42
  their ovaries removed. And I used to get very worried
• 17:45
  about these letters and very sad.
• 17:46
  And now I think it's laughable that they don't understand.
• 17:49
  It's just a natural hormone And someone's had their ovaries
• 17:52
  removed. And we've all know and agree
• 17:55
  that ovaries produce esters hour, progesterone,
• 17:58
  testosterone. Yet somehow we only give esters
• 18:00
  hour back. We forget about the other two
• 18:03
  hormones. And all the receptors for it all
• 18:04
  over the body and the implication of mood and emotion
• 18:07
  and all and sleep and, and all of those important things.
• 18:11
  And I think, you know, one of the things that I've learned,
• 18:13
  and I guess through my podcasts and through working with a lot
• 18:16
  of academics and researchers is there's a great difference in
• 18:20
  the medical community between real hands on clinicians, people
• 18:24
  like yourself, and the doctors that you work with so closely
• 18:26
  who see women day in, day out and listen to them and have that
• 18:30
  real empathy. And women who sit well,
• 18:32
  particularly, unfortunately, women, but it often has women
• 18:35
  researchers or particularly in your field who sit back.
• 18:38
  Yeah, in their academic. Yeah, libraries.
• 18:40
  Or there's that ivory town who don't indeed.
• 18:43
  They're not in clinic. And one of the big questions
• 18:45
  that I have for women, you know, particularly who are in this
• 18:48
  world and who are doing the research, is how many patients
• 18:51
  did you treat last week? How many women did you actually
• 18:53
  sit and look at and take their case notes and look them in the
• 18:56
  eye and actually talk about their symptoms and how you can
• 18:59
  relieve them? And that's really important
• 19:01
  because knowledge is one thing, but putting it into practice is,
• 19:05
  is crucially important. And even our education
• 19:07
  programme, we filmed actors and pretended to have consultations
• 19:11
  because people learn how to talk to people, how to address
• 19:14
  sometimes called quite sensitive conversations.
• 19:18
  But it is, I mean, I was talking to a lady on Monday who's really
• 19:22
  at the end of Tether. She's quite young.
• 19:24
  She's tried to take her life four Times Now and she went to a
• 19:29
  a private clinic, not mine, a few months ago and they said
• 19:33
  it's not your hormones, just stop everything.
• 19:35
  Of course it is a hormones, but no one's really addressing it in
• 19:38
  the right way. The the gynecologist had removed
• 19:41
  her ovaries last year because they said it is a hormone
• 19:43
  problem. Let's just remove your hormones
• 19:45
  and things will improve with something.
• 19:47
  No, of course they didn't. But how I've managed her now is
• 19:50
  very different to how I would have managed her 5 or 10 years
• 19:53
  ago because I think she's a lot more progesterone deficient and
• 19:57
  testosterone deficient. And everyone's just been giving
• 19:59
  her different doses of estrogen and, and, you know, just talking
• 20:04
  to her and getting her to be part of the conversation.
• 20:08
  Her partner was there as well. She just said, no one's ever
• 20:12
  spoken to me like this before. No one's really listened.
• 20:15
  And I just thought, gosh, these poor women, it's just like
• 20:20
  they're on a conveyor belt. She's been under psychiatrist,
• 20:22
  she's been under crisis team, she's been under obviously
• 20:25
  other. Doctors thinking about their
• 20:27
  hormones. But you hear this a lot, and you
• 20:30
  must hear it on your Instagram community, because I do.
• 20:32
  Oh, so much. And I look in the news as well.
• 20:35
  And whenever I see a news report of a woman, you know, often in
• 20:39
  her early 50s, who's taken her own life.
• 20:41
  And I know I have two people who I knew personally who are quite
• 20:46
  high profile who died by suicide at the age of 1, was 51 and one
• 20:51
  was 52. And I look back and I think if
• 20:54
  only I'd known then what I know now.
• 20:57
  And just, I mean, it's just so tragic.
• 21:01
  And then also you look at historical figures, you know, I
• 21:03
  mean, I was up in York and not that long ago with kids,
• 21:06
  graduation. And I think it was at Virginia
• 21:09
  Woolf who threw herself off the bridge there, you know, aged
• 21:12
  whatever she was. You read her.
• 21:13
  Suicide notes and her Diaries. She was so tormented, but she
• 21:19
  had so much insight, which is what I see a lot with women who
• 21:22
  have mental health issues related to their hormones.
• 21:26
  And she was just felt a burden. You know, how she was writing
• 21:30
  was about I can't do this anymore.
• 21:33
  I'm such a failure almost. And she wasn't.
• 21:36
  She was an incredible person, but.
• 21:39
  But all throughout history that there are women in that same
• 21:41
  position. Of course there was.
• 21:42
  I was in Oslo at the beginning of the summer holidays and
• 21:46
  Edward Monk's daughter and sister was in and out of
• 21:49
  psychiatric institutions. And of course I'm sure it would
• 21:53
  have been related to her hormones and you see it.
• 21:56
  But that was then. Yes, but that was back then.
• 21:59
  But you really wouldn't expect. And also particularly with, you
• 22:02
  know, there, I say, you know, high profile women who've got
• 22:04
  access, yeah, hopefully to, you know, any kind of healthcare
• 22:08
  that they would choose and they still fall through the net
• 22:11
  because there's lack of information.
• 22:13
  And it's not just menopause. This in the paper today actually
• 22:16
  I don't know if you've seen there's a lady who drowned with
• 22:19
  post Natal depression and post Natal depression is associated
• 22:24
  with an increased incidence and risk of suicide.
• 22:27
  Yet these people, if you look at all the guidelines, they never
• 22:30
  mention hormones. Really it's all about
• 22:33
  antidepressants. But we know that levels of
• 22:36
  hormones are really high in pregnancy and they fall off a
• 22:39
  Cliff. And we've, I'm sure with your
• 22:42
  various pregnancies you've experienced some sort of baby
• 22:45
  Blues. Most of us have.
• 22:47
  Yes. And I'm very, very lucky in that
• 22:48
  they didn't affect me hugely, but they definitely did affect
• 22:51
  me. And actually I was talking to
• 22:53
  Lily because she's got a one year old and she was talking
• 22:56
  about the the need for better awareness of vaginal estrogen,
• 23:00
  you know, after pregnancy and when you're breastfeeding.
• 23:03
  And you know, that never crossed my mind.
• 23:04
  And she spoke to her GP about it, who said, Oh no, no, I'm I'm
• 23:07
  not able to prescribe that for you, but.
• 23:09
  It's madness, isn't it? It's.
• 23:10
  So safe and it's so you think of what the estrogen levels would
• 23:13
  have been a few months previously during pregnancy.
• 23:16
  Why could it possibly be so damaging?
• 23:18
  And during pregnancy we're protected, aren't we?
• 23:20
  Our immune system comes in to make sure that we're OK and our
• 23:23
  new baby's OK and that's why it's giving us so much
• 23:26
  oestrogen. So why would it suddenly turn?
• 23:28
  Against us it's it's his madness And I I remember being scared
• 23:31
  after having Jessica when they kept saying day five.
• 23:34
  It's always day 5, isn't it, that you might feel a bit
• 23:36
  tearful, you might feel a bit sad and then night sweats is
• 23:39
  because so-called your milk comes in.
• 23:41
  Well, no, it's because you've got no hormones in your body.
• 23:44
  And why I didn't think about just having a little bit of just
• 23:48
  hormones then just to smooth that would have been accused.
• 23:51
  Then so post natally, yeah, you know, for literally for mothers
• 23:54
  in delivery wards to be given with a pump of oestro gel and
• 23:58
  just said look, just to help regulate the transition from
• 24:01
  lots of hormones to no hormones. Absolutely.
• 24:03
  And progesterone is that progesterone is
• 24:05
  transformational. So you've probably heard of
• 24:07
  Katrina Dalton who was a doctor and she was fundamental about
• 24:11
  progesterone especially for post Natal depression and post Natal
• 24:15
  psychosis. And I've spoken to some of her
• 24:17
  patients actually, who say they she absolutely saved their life.
• 24:22
  And she gave quite high doses of progesterone.
• 24:24
  But she was hold in front of the General Medical Council, the
• 24:28
  British Medical Medical Association tried to, you know,
• 24:32
  discredit her. She had a very difficult time.
• 24:35
  But everyone said she was very formidable, that you didn't
• 24:37
  argue with her. And she actually went to my old
• 24:39
  school and I remember her giving a talk and I was about 12.
• 24:42
  Yeah, amazing woman. But she carried on because the
• 24:45
  women knew what was going on. And she was very clear when you
• 24:48
  read her books that it had to be progesterone, not synthetic
• 24:52
  progesterone. It had to be progesterone.
• 24:55
  She knew then and she knew then. And she's written some great
• 24:58
  papers about PMDD, about post Natal depression, because she
• 25:02
  realized for herself, her migraines improved when she was
• 25:06
  pregnant. Yeah.
• 25:07
  And she didn't know what it was. And then she realised
• 25:09
  progesterone levels are very high.
• 25:11
  Yes. When when we're pregnant.
• 25:13
  Well, even Lily having terrible migraines and I know you've,
• 25:16
  you've got that in your family as well.
• 25:19
  And they will often say, oh, well, wait till you get pregnant
• 25:22
  and, and it'll be easier. Well, why?
• 25:24
  Why should she wait till she's pregnant?
• 25:26
  If you know that it's going to get easier, or it could be, why
• 25:28
  wouldn't you not try a bit of extra?
• 25:30
  Estrogen right now or progesterone?
• 25:31
  Yeah. It seems like it's there.
• 25:33
  It's hiding in plain sight, isn't it?
• 25:35
  Is. Isn't it?
• 25:36
  And and it's just joining the dots, but I sometimes think,
• 25:39
  like the frustration that I have about the difference in natural
• 25:42
  and synthetic hormones is what you've quietly and vocally had
• 25:46
  about olive oil. It, you know, do you hear where
• 25:49
  I'm coming from, don't you? Because years ago, you were
• 25:52
  advocating healthy, healthy fat. Yeah.
• 25:54
  It's the yeah, the difference between, you know, they're all
• 25:56
  fats, but yeah, some are damaged and healthy and yeah, you know,
• 25:59
  and unhealthy and, and some are, are, are not.
• 26:02
  So we've done a full U-turn really with that, haven't we?
• 26:05
  Because no ones disagreeing with that now, but there was a long
• 26:08
  time where you know, low fat spreads with.
• 26:11
  Everything, Oh my gosh, you know, you go into any
• 26:13
  supermarket and you know, you had to put the healthy option
• 26:15
  into your into your basket. And yeah, no, I was I was nearly
• 26:19
  sued by a well known margarine manufacturer for daring suggests
• 26:24
  that something low fat and full of trans fats and hydrogenated
• 26:27
  damage fats could be, you know, in in any way deleterious to our
• 26:31
  health. And then of course they removed
• 26:32
  all the trans fats from. It's interesting isn't it
• 26:35
  because people realise, but I think what's really changes that
• 26:39
  people understood. So the people that were eating
• 26:41
  these fats and we choose when we go to the supermarket and even
• 26:46
  Lucy, my 14 year old was saying at one of her old schools, one
• 26:50
  of the cookery teachers was they were talking about healthy
• 26:53
  options and she was talking about having low fat yogurt.
• 26:56
  And Lucy's putting up her hand and saying actually, yes, Lucy's
• 27:00
  if I stood my ground because I know what's what and it is this
• 27:04
  misinformation. But again, it's about choice.
• 27:07
  If people know, then they can choose.
• 27:10
  But I want that message to change about hormones because
• 27:13
  getting back to the natural hormones and the synthetic
• 27:17
  chemical hormones that are in contraception, they're so
• 27:20
  different. But that was the.
• 27:21
  Yeah, I did a podcast with Kate Muir with her brilliant book on
• 27:24
  that with, with the pill and just realising the difference.
• 27:27
  Yeah, with and and how and the great unfairness of it that they
• 27:32
  could make the contraceptive pill with natural body identical
• 27:35
  hormones, but they don't. No, because it's cheap.
• 27:38
  That's the big problem, isn't? It and we're just women.
• 27:40
  So what does that matter? No, but I think people are
• 27:44
  realising. But the other thing, like we
• 27:47
  were saying, is once our hormones are balanced, we can
• 27:50
  exercise more, we can eat more and we'll eat more but eat
• 27:54
  differently. Yes, but I do think the exercise
• 27:57
  thing is so important about individualising exercise, but
• 28:01
  also knowing that you can change the type of exercise you do
• 28:04
  because you've really changed. Like you say, you're doing
• 28:07
  weights. And actually, I'm writing my
• 28:08
  next book for for next year, which is all about longevity.
• 28:11
  It's called How to Age and it has a big section on exercise
• 28:14
  because what I've discovered over the years is that we can
• 28:17
  create new stem cells and we can get more muscle mass and we can
• 28:21
  help our our metabolism stay active and fired up simply by
• 28:25
  changing the exercise that we do.
• 28:27
  And I do far less exercise now than I did before.
• 28:30
  So it's very time efficient. I'll just do a few push ups.
• 28:34
  I'll do a bit of skipping because I'm jumping up and down.
• 28:36
  And so I'm helping with my bone density.
• 28:38
  I'm lifting heavy weights, which makes me feel resilient and
• 28:41
  strong because I am physically strong.
• 28:43
  And that's it. You know, I don't go and do an
• 28:45
  hour long step class, which is what I used to do, jump around
• 28:48
  in a unitard, you know, looking like Jane Fonda with leggings,
• 28:51
  everything. Which looking back, I mean, it
• 28:53
  was quite a nice social thing to do.
• 28:55
  I used to follow it. Probably a glass of Chardonnay
• 28:56
  and a muffin. You know, I'm doing all the good
• 28:58
  work, but actually we can do far better than that.
• 29:02
  And it it is. It's about understanding, I
• 29:05
  think, the dynamics of how our body works.
• 29:07
  Yeah. And I think that's so important.
• 29:09
  It's really important tool to know that our body changes, but
• 29:13
  we can do more and help more. And certainly looking at
• 29:17
  exercise changing, I think yes is so important.
• 29:20
  I love some of the accounts on Instagram.
• 29:22
  There's there's one, I think it's a hashtag.
• 29:24
  It's old lady Gaines and and you, there's all these literally
• 29:26
  octogenarians. Yeah.
• 29:28
  And they're flying around on parallel bars and doing chin
• 29:31
  UPS, which that's my goal, even just to do 1 chin up.
• 29:33
  I know I was watching you in the park on Instagram and.
• 29:35
  Working towards it. It's so.
• 29:37
  Hard. It's really hard.
• 29:39
  It's really hard. I we have, I have I'm trying to
• 29:41
  hang at the minute, but and then my husband's got this stupid
• 29:43
  thing where he ties weights around his waist and then does
• 29:47
  chin ups and it's like so annoying.
• 29:49
  But anyway. Fat distribution is different,
• 29:51
  but I will get there. I'm determined for my next
• 29:53
  birthday to be on Instagram doing a full chin up.
• 29:56
  Very good. So it's there's so much more we
• 29:59
  could talk about but it's come to the end.
• 30:01
  But it's not the end until I've asked for three take home tips.
• 30:05
  OK. So three things that we should
• 30:08
  be doing in the second-half of our lives that's going to help
• 30:11
  our future health. OK, so, well, you've got to
• 30:14
  prioritize sleep. Yeah.
• 30:15
  You know, sleep is a superpower and we do so much.
• 30:18
  The body does so much subconsciously and unconsciously
• 30:21
  while we sleep. So anything that we can do,
• 30:24
  obviously getting our hormones balance is going to help with
• 30:26
  sleep. But having a good sleep routine,
• 30:29
  I wear blue blocking glasses at night to shut off the blue
• 30:31
  light. And I don't feel a fool now just
• 30:33
  wandering around in orange glasses and everything's this
• 30:35
  lovely reddish haze in the evening in my house.
• 30:38
  So, you know, prioritize sleep, whether you've got to take
• 30:40
  magnesium or lavender on your pillow or whatever it is.
• 30:44
  But please just make sure that that sleep, sleep happens.
• 30:47
  And you know, weights, you know, you don't have to buy weights.
• 30:51
  Do some push ups. It sounds really daunting, but
• 30:53
  start standing on a kitchen countertop.
• 30:56
  Go down, get on your knees and do push ups.
• 30:58
  Just gradually build up, you know, try one literally 1.
• 31:03
  And then the day after tomorrow, try to, you know, that's how we
• 31:07
  start and we've got to have more fun.
• 31:11
  Great. Like that, have more fun.
• 31:13
  It's like, you know, once you get everything, once you get
• 31:15
  your hormones right and you feel physically stronger and more
• 31:18
  empowered, then let's go and find our purpose and our passion
• 31:22
  and lighten up with life. Because I think you realize that
• 31:25
  life is short and it's frail and it's a gift and you don't want
• 31:29
  to get to the end of it and look back and think, what a waste.
• 31:32
  What was all that about? Let's just have a bit more fun.
• 31:35
  What a great way to end. Thanks, Liz.
• 31:37
  Thank you for having me.