Menopause isn't just hot flushes and mood swings; it's a time of deep personal change that can shake up relationships. Whether it's with your partner, kids, or colleagues, the shift in your hormones can stir up emotions and reactions that feel like they're out of your control.

As we age, our bodies undergo a myriad of changes, and for women, one of the most significant transitions is menopause. This period can bring about challenges, but it also presents an opportunity to embrace a healthier lifestyle that can lead to a more vibrant and fulfilling midlife. Let's explore how fitness and movement play a crucial role in this journey.

Now… eyes, in relation to menopause, are rarely discussed. In fact, it is almost the last thing you’d think of, if you’re struggling with your eye health.

But, it’s actually quite surprising how many women suffer from poor eye health.

62% of women experience dry eye, in relation to their menopause, and interestingly, the survey showed that only 16% are aware that it is a part of the menopause.

Now, if you’re not sure where to start with your menopause journey, make sure that you've optimised fitness and nutrition. It’s easy to say and hard to do, especially if you're feeling run down with menopausal symptoms; but you must start somewhere and getting nutrition back on track is key. Dr Henderson says to try out things like intermittent fasting, or the Zoe Programme which looks at your gut probiotic health. Also look at increasing protein intake, these are three really key things.

As we age, things happen to us anyway, so we have two things going on. We have the loss of our oestrogen and progesterone and the reduction in testosterone, and then we have us just getting older. Both of those together impact upon things which can happen to us in the future.

Our gut is really at the centre of our metabolism. It's responsible for how we digest and absorb every nutrient that comes into our bodies. Now, those nutrients can't reach our organs or enter our bloodstream until they've been through the gut. The gut is playing this really important role in providing us with our nutrition and the fuel that we need to live every day. It's also one of our first, layers of defence for immunity.

Such a hot topic for this month! October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and with so much controversy and contradicting information surrounding HRT and breast cancer this talk was seriously popular!

Dr Macbeth says “HRT is literally just trying to kind of smooth out those significant swings that you get in the menopause.” Dr Alison Macbeth is a British Menopause Society accredited GP with a passion for women’s health.

The session cleverly dealt with the elephant in the room first, and got straight to the point.

Does HRT cause breast cancer? This is such an important question. Because this is the myth of all the myths that has truly STUCK!

Wow. If you think you have ADHD…this is the talk for you! October is recognised as ADHD Awareness Month, a crucial time to shed light on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and provide support and understanding for those who live with it. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects both children and adults worldwide.

Now, let’s think about grown women going through the menopause. Hormonal fluctuations leading up to and during the menopause can have a marked impact on your ADHD symptoms. When you go through menopause, your oestrogen levels decline. This can, in turn, impact the neurotransmitters in your brain required for attention, regulating your emotions, organisational skills, and memory.

I’d never seen an obvious link between heart health and menopause and World Menopause Day couldn’t have come sooner. With the theme this year being cardiovascular disease, it turns out this is a huge issue for menopausal women.

When we think of angina or heart problems, we tend to think of older men suffering from cardiac troubles, the subject seems completely unrelated to menopause; but it turns out there is a connection, a very strong one. Dr Tonye Wokoma explained to us on our latest Let’s all Talk Menopause webinar, how heart health affects us during menopause, what we can do to lower our chances of getting heart disease and what exactly does having heart disease mean. This session ultimately covers a massive gap in knowledge surrounding heart health during menopause; after all its not the first thing that pops into your head when you think of menopause.

“Find your voice”

The words of the Labour MP Carolyn Harris, talking at the Women In Work Summit that was held in London on Tuesday.

It was a fabulous conference discussing how menopause impacts women in the workplace.

Ms Harris said firms that are ‘meno washing’ or ignoring the menopause completely should be challenged. She told the audience that women should be shaming companies that don’t listen to their concerns.

Now, I can see some women being very concerned about their job security if they were to do that, but there are others ways to encourage change and they were discussed by this week’s guest, Dr Claire Kaye on ‘Let’s All Talk Menopause’.

We are surrounded by gut health and words like “healthy microbiome” but what does that mean? And more importantly, how does having a healthy gut affect our hormones? To answer our questions, we asked Dr Fionnuala Barton aka “The Menopause Medic” onto “Let’s all Talk Menopause” to answer our questions!

Dr Barton is a BMS registered menopause specialist & women’s health GP and is passionate about assisting women physically and emotionally through all stages of life. Thankfully she came armed with a mountain of knowledge on how to make our gut healthy during menopause. What’s more, she explained how having a healthy gut can help ease our menopause symptoms.

This session was two-fold; natural menopause, and surgically induced menopause. First she tackled surgical menopause and explained how it differed from natural; more often than not, surgical menopause symptoms are more severe and intense.

Just the words I wanted to hear when the fabulous Dr Naomi Potter joined us this week for a conversation about HRT. I love a good old chat about the menopause. It doesn’t matter how many discussions I have listened to on Let’s All Talk Menopause, I always learn something new and I am always grateful for the moment when I’m reassured that what’s happening is ‘normal’.

This week, I read about the actor Sarah Lancashire. I loved her performance in (Un)Happy Valley. That role saw her win the ‘Best Drama Performance’ at the National Television Awards this year. She has discussed her difficulties with the menopause and revealed how she struggles with brain fog. The articles also says she’s plagued by hot flushes and is considering a change in the type of HRT she uses.

Hello and welcome back to another series of Let’s all Talk Menopause, and the obvious starting point would be, of course, to give an introduction to the peri / menopause. And who better to do so than Dr Nighat Arif, a popular GP with over 15 years of experience in the NHS and private practice, specialising in women’s health and family planning. Plus, she is also now a popular television GP and social media star! So we were delighted she could join us during her busy schedule, to give us the A to Z on one of the most important stages of a woman’s life.