Speaker 1: You're listening to a mother and Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on. Hello, it's Maya popping
Speaker 2: into your ears to share another interview with Naomi Watts. Well,
Speaker 2: it's kind of an interview. So many of you loved
Speaker 2: the conversation that we had earlier in the week about
Speaker 2: her book Dare I Say It, and her experience with
Speaker 2: early menopause and what her life has been like.
Speaker 1: Scroll back in your feet and listen to that if
Speaker 1: you missed it. But I wanted to drop this episode
Speaker 1: back into your feed because you might have missed it
Speaker 1: from last year. It was a conversation I had with
Speaker 1: Naomi and Alison bray Dado, who used to be a
Speaker 1: Dolly model and has become a menopause advocate like Naomi,
Speaker 1: and also doctor Ginny Mansberg, who's written a brilliant book
Speaker 1: called The m Word about menopause. We sat down at
Speaker 1: south By Southwest and I talk to them in a
Speaker 1: bit of a panel style conversation about I guess the
Speaker 1: Bermuda triangle of women's health, the funny and the hot
Speaker 1: mess stuff, personal stories and some advice, and they get
Speaker 1: very real about the roller coaster that is menopause and
Speaker 1: perimenopause and the chaos and all of those things. So
Speaker 1: have a listen and enjoy from Momma Mia. I'm Meya Friedman,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to a very different episode of No Filter.
Speaker 1: Does that make you nervous? Some people don't like change.
Speaker 1: I like change. One change that we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about today is the change of menopause. Perimenopause, the stuff
Speaker 1: that happens to women as we get older, every woman.
Speaker 1: This episode is a special one because it's me interviewing
Speaker 1: three women on stage at south By Southwest that was
Speaker 1: held in Sydney. They're amazing women. Actress Naomi Watts who's
Speaker 1: also a business owner, Alison bray Datto who many people
Speaker 1: will remember as a dolling model but she's now an
Speaker 1: author and an educator, and doctor Jenny Mansburg. They're all
Speaker 1: experts in their own way about menopause. They're all women
Speaker 1: in their fifties. Hopefully our generation will be the last
Speaker 1: to have shame around this topic menopause and perimenopause. It
Speaker 1: was a funny conversation. I enjoyed it so much, and
Speaker 1: so we decided to turn it into a bit of
Speaker 1: a podcast and bring it to you. Now. There's advice,
Speaker 1: there's personal stories, there's myth busting. It gets funny, it
Speaker 1: gets rude, it gets emotional. You can love it. Here's
Speaker 1: Naomi Watts, Allison Bray, Daddo, doctor Jenny Mansburg and me. Hello.
Speaker 1: We're like the Beatles, but with hot flashes. What a
Speaker 1: treat to be sitting with for such accomplished women who
Speaker 1: are all in their fifties, all of us, and talking
Speaker 1: about something that until recently wasn't discussed much and no
Speaker 1: one wanted to really be associated with. But on our stage,
Speaker 1: we've got two women who've written books on the topic.
Speaker 1: We've got one woman who's launched a business catering to
Speaker 1: women going through menopause. And we're very excited to be
Speaker 1: bringing this topic out into the open because for anyone
Speaker 1: in the audience who hasn't hit it yet, it's coming
Speaker 1: for you and it's not all bad news. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to start by asking our panel what did you
Speaker 1: think menopause was before you experienced it, and looking back,
Speaker 1: what was your first symptom or symptoms? Naomi, Yeah, menopause
Speaker 1: to me was pretty much the signifier of the end
Speaker 1: as I knew it.
Speaker 3: I knew nothing. I did know that my mother went
Speaker 3: into menopause, but no other information surrounding that. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that she had a number of years leading up
Speaker 3: to that point that she may or may not have suffered.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that she possibly had a myriad of symptoms.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that it occurred on a day, you know.
Speaker 3: I just knew nothing, and what happened with me. My
Speaker 3: symptoms mostly that occurred were around shame and fear and
Speaker 3: anxiety because I happened to go to my doctor and say, look,
Speaker 3: I'm not getting pregnant. Can you explain why I've spent
Speaker 3: my whole life trying not to get pregnant and now
Speaker 3: suddenly I want to get pregnant and it's not happening.
Speaker 3: And so the doctor suggested that we take.
Speaker 4: A blood panel.
Speaker 3: I took the bloods and the blood suggested that I
Speaker 3: was close to menopause, and so that's where the panic
Speaker 3: came in.
Speaker 1: I literally fought old with you.
Speaker 3: I was thirty six, So that was the first uttering
Speaker 3: of that comment being introduced to me. I went to
Speaker 3: my mother and said, what the actual beep? Why didn't
Speaker 3: you tell me more? And she said, well, these were
Speaker 3: the conversations I never had with my mother because she
Speaker 3: never had them with hers. And so the cycle went on,
Speaker 3: and that just flawed me, like, how has that happened?
Speaker 3: When we know that half the population will get there
Speaker 3: at some point, as you said, how is that actually possible?
Speaker 3: And we're living longer now as well? Where is the education?
Speaker 3: Where is the conversation between friends, even sisters, family members?
Speaker 1: Allison? Had you talked to anyone about minnopause or perimenopause
Speaker 1: before it happened to you? How old were you I was?
Speaker 5: I think I was about forty five forty six when
Speaker 5: I got my first symptom, and that was just a
Speaker 5: change in my cycle that was really radical. Might go
Speaker 5: from two weeks to heavy bleeding to no bleeding. But
Speaker 5: I hadn't even heard the word perimenopause. That was a
Speaker 5: brand new word. I was like, what the hell is that?
Speaker 5: And I thought menopause was just your period stopping. I
Speaker 5: honestly thought that's all it was. And then to start
Speaker 5: to do the research on it and look at we
Speaker 5: were talking before fifty three symptoms and the amount of
Speaker 5: effect that it has on women, the amount of effect
Speaker 5: in the workplace, the relationships, the mental health. It was
Speaker 5: so unbelievably shocking to me. It was like I'd lifted
Speaker 5: up this carpet and there was all of this stuff
Speaker 5: underneath it. People had just swept under and no one
Speaker 5: had told me it.
Speaker 4: Was all there.
Speaker 5: So I was deeply shocked, and that was the reason
Speaker 5: for writing the book and researching more about it, because
Speaker 5: it was something that I had two older sisters, a
Speaker 5: mom not a word, group of women not a word.
Speaker 5: I was just left very alone in that as well,
Speaker 5: and I think a lot of women feel that way
Speaker 5: if they haven't been you know, explained symptoms and what
Speaker 5: can go wrong and what can go right as well,
Speaker 5: but a real sense of loneliness.
Speaker 1: Ginny Australian women. I'm told love to say I'm going
Speaker 1: to get my hormones checked because I think that's when
Speaker 1: I noticed changes in my cycle. I also just assumed
Speaker 1: that menopause was like a slow turning off of the tap.
Speaker 1: In actual fact, my tap turned on, which I really
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting. I'd always had pretty light periods and then
Speaker 1: they were suddenly very very heavy. So, along with a
Speaker 1: few other symptoms, I went to see my GP, and
Speaker 1: I said, I want to get a blood test, assuming
Speaker 1: that the blood test could tell me whether I was
Speaker 1: in menopause. Perimenopause is this something that women do often?
Speaker 1: And maybe you could explain why there is no blood
Speaker 1: test and what menopause even actually is.
Speaker 6: So a lot of people don't realize this. Menopause is
Speaker 6: a single day. So it's a day that happens twelve
Speaker 6: months to the day from the first day of your
Speaker 6: last period. Only you didn't know it was your last
Speaker 6: period because at that point they're all over the place.
Speaker 6: You didn't know whether another one was coming in three
Speaker 6: months or six months or two weeks for all you know.
Speaker 6: So if you are, you know, switched on enough to remember,
Speaker 6: that's your day of menopause. It's the rollercoaster leading up
Speaker 6: to menopause that we call perimenopause.
Speaker 1: That is the absolute car crash.
Speaker 6: And there actually are two phases of perimenopause.
Speaker 1: We're just skimmed right over that. I know there are
Speaker 1: two phases.
Speaker 6: The first one is when ovulation kind of goes and
Speaker 6: you're not ovulating that much. If you don't ovulate, you
Speaker 6: don't get a lot of progesterone see progesterine levels drop.
Speaker 6: But at that point your brain is still trying to
Speaker 6: kick your overariaes into gear and so it's putting out
Speaker 6: heaps of stimulating hormone. So your estrogen is going up
Speaker 6: and down like a yo yo. So I could do
Speaker 6: a blood test for you at nine am Monday morning,
Speaker 6: do the same blood test Tuesday afternoon, and the levels
Speaker 6: will be completely different. So I've had lots of my
Speaker 6: patients say I went to the doctor, they did a
Speaker 6: blood test, I'm in menopause and I had my last
Speaker 6: period two weeks ago. Okay, that doesn't make sense. You've
Speaker 6: just all heard menopause means that it's been months since
Speaker 6: the period and until that time. Unfortunately, the blood tests
Speaker 6: are completely useless.
Speaker 1: But we also know that your.
Speaker 6: Blood levels of hormones correlate very poorly with your symptoms,
Speaker 6: so it's a really unhelpful test. We know that individual women,
Speaker 6: I see maybe ten new patients a day with pery
Speaker 6: and menopause symptoms, I have never met to the same.
Speaker 1: Everybody is different.
Speaker 6: That makes it really difficult to manage because getting support
Speaker 6: from your friends can be really difficult. But at the
Speaker 6: same time, the hormone tests don't bother. It's really a
Speaker 6: waste of time.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to everyone what estrogen is responsible for
Speaker 1: in the body? That is, you know, how long is
Speaker 1: a piece of string in every single organ of your body,
Speaker 1: from your heart to every joint to your skin, to
Speaker 1: every bit of collagen in your joints, in your bones,
Speaker 1: in your muscles, through to your brain.
Speaker 6: Unbelievable numbers of estrogen receptors in your brain, in your guts,
Speaker 6: in your lungs. Receptors are everywhere, and they do different
Speaker 6: things in different body parts. And that's why when I
Speaker 6: started specializing in menopause, I think we had seven symptoms
Speaker 6: of menopause. We just cracked fifty three because we just
Speaker 6: added chronic cough to the mix, which is a brand
Speaker 6: new one. Welcome to the club, chronic cough. That feels
Speaker 6: unfair here, thanks for that. But literally, there are very
Speaker 6: few body parts that are unaffected by the loss of estrogen.
Speaker 1: Some of the more physical symptoms like hot flushes, insomnia,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things a fairly well known, you know,
Speaker 1: cycle irregularity. I think what was a shock to me
Speaker 1: and a lot of women is the emotional changes. Alie.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you what was your emotional and mental state,
Speaker 1: like when you were going through Perry.
Speaker 5: Well, that for me was you know, if someone asked
Speaker 5: me what was the hardest part of perimenopause, it was
Speaker 5: absolutely the emotional toll that it took on me. And
Speaker 5: I always thought of myself as a fairly optimistic person,
Speaker 5: but I became severely anxious. I became depressed. There were
Speaker 5: days I did not want to get out of bed.
Speaker 5: There were days that I thought it'd be better off
Speaker 5: if I wasn't around. I take too much of a
Speaker 5: toll on my family. I couldn't see that I was
Speaker 5: ever going to come out of that state. And it
Speaker 5: was a weird experience at the same time, because there
Speaker 5: was another part of me kind of looking down, going
Speaker 5: where are you going with this?
Speaker 4: Like what is happening right now?
Speaker 5: I got myself to a therapist at that point because
Speaker 5: I'd never had those kind of thoughts ever, and there
Speaker 5: was no reason for it, you know, it was just
Speaker 5: my hormones just but that was by far the hardest
Speaker 5: part for me. Naomi, what about you, Yeah, I think
Speaker 5: so this timing of the pregnancy thing, like I was
Speaker 5: all motivated to just have my children. I thought, how
Speaker 5: do I figure this out with my doctor, and my doctor,
Speaker 5: mercifully was very pro hormones and all of at and
Speaker 5: despite the fear that was surrounding the two HRT two
Speaker 5: sorry yeah, sorry, HRT hormone replacement therapy. Firstly, I'll say
Speaker 5: I had two children naturally. I tried things.
Speaker 3: I wasn't a candidate for IVF, inseminations weren't working for me,
Speaker 3: cloonate nothing, so I did natural interventions. Mercifully, I was
Speaker 3: able to get pregnant. As soon as I had my
Speaker 3: second child. I basically went into hardcore symptoms, and like
Speaker 3: you said, perimenopause was not a word that I knew
Speaker 3: of or my doctors were using. I then went into
Speaker 3: the shame part again. I went into oh my god,
Speaker 3: I'm finished. I'm no longer sexy. I work in Hollywood,
Speaker 3: you know, and if you're not fertile, you're unfuckable.
Speaker 4: And I'd actually heard.
Speaker 3: That term from an agent from long ago. You better
Speaker 3: get going, you better put your pedal to the metal. Work,
Speaker 3: work work, because you've only gotten till you're forty. And
Speaker 3: I said, what is that why? And he goes, well,
Speaker 3: you know, you become unfuckable and you can't play a
Speaker 3: leading lady.
Speaker 1: So that was just shocking to be so for you.
Speaker 1: It had career implications for sure.
Speaker 3: So the shame and the panic and the loneliness. But
Speaker 3: as I said, my doctor was well educated and walked
Speaker 3: me through it. I trusted my doctor, so the symptoms
Speaker 3: that I had were dealt with pretty quickly. I've been
Speaker 3: on HRT for a lot of years now. I'm a
Speaker 3: big advocate of it because it's all a cycle. I
Speaker 3: couldn't sleep, You then get brain fog, you then get depression,
Speaker 3: You then get all kinds of things, so you're on
Speaker 3: a cycle of going nowhere fast?
Speaker 1: Did anyone else have rage? Just me? Then rage and weepage? No?
Speaker 4: No, no, I'm with you.
Speaker 6: So we know that one in three women will get
Speaker 6: anxiety and all depression around this time, and what a
Speaker 6: lot of us never talk about. And in this country
Speaker 6: we rightly acknowledge perinatal and postnatal depression, anxiety, and it's
Speaker 6: really well funded, which is great, But the peak period
Speaker 6: of vulnerability in a woman's life is actually around perimenopause
Speaker 6: and the early postmenopausal years. It's actually the peak time
Speaker 6: for suicide as well, So we need to be talking
Speaker 6: about this yet and divorce and career ending moves, you know.
Speaker 6: And you've got to think about the women in the
Speaker 6: workplace who are looking at that fifty year old woman going,
Speaker 6: oh my god, I did not want to be that,
Speaker 6: and they're going to exit because they just look at
Speaker 6: her with her rage and she's pissed off at everybody
Speaker 6: and pissed off with her kids, hates a partner.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: It's not a great inspiring figure out there. And we
Speaker 6: know that the main symptoms because it does look a
Speaker 6: bit different, the anxiety and depression, and it often hits
Speaker 6: people who've never had a mental health issue ever in
Speaker 6: their life. But what we know is the rage is
Speaker 6: a big one, you know, that just pissed off with everybody,
Speaker 6: the weepiness, extreme anxiety, These are the sorts of things
Speaker 6: that happen that are quite different. And you can tell
Speaker 6: that it's hormonal, and we treat it differently because it
Speaker 6: is hormonal.
Speaker 1: And then throw in some teenagers.
Speaker 4: Just to top it off.
Speaker 6: Doesn't Mother nature give us teenagers at the worst time
Speaker 6: of our lives and elderly parents as well, because we're
Speaker 6: all like, you know, you've got to take mum to
Speaker 6: the doctor. And then take the kid to another call
Speaker 6: from the principle again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to ask about identity because it does
Speaker 1: happen at a time when you are aware that you're
Speaker 1: becoming invisible in society, when our culture is telling women
Speaker 1: to get in the bin because we are no longer fertile,
Speaker 1: we are no longer in our early twenties, and we
Speaker 1: live in a very youth obsessed culture. Allison, you are
Speaker 1: a model. You literally earned a living from the way
Speaker 1: you looked. What kind of reckoning was this time for
Speaker 1: you in terms of identity and self image?
Speaker 5: I mean I was lucky in the sense that I'd
Speaker 5: left the modeling industry and was doing other work that
Speaker 5: was more well, it wasn't based on my looks, so
Speaker 5: that actually helped me going into perimenopause. But at the
Speaker 5: same time, I had moved back from America, so I
Speaker 5: was in Australia when all the perimenopause and menopausal stuff hit.
Speaker 5: So I was very much recognized as that old Dolly girl,
Speaker 5: Cosmo girl model. So it was really interesting for a while.
Speaker 5: Like you, Naomi, I felt really embarrassed and ashamed about
Speaker 5: how I'd aged and thinking like I'd let people down somehow,
Speaker 5: and I.
Speaker 1: Felt very let down by you.
Speaker 4: I know, I remember you mentioned that to me.
Speaker 1: I'm so disappointed in you. My god, how.
Speaker 4: Dare you age? I've moved through that.
Speaker 5: I thought there's no way I can stay in that
Speaker 5: space and it's just not a good place to stay in.
Speaker 5: So we will get to the plus sides of metopause eventually,
Speaker 5: but you know, I had to really sort of dig
Speaker 5: deep into myself in a way and go, well, who
Speaker 5: am I? It really made me look at myself as
Speaker 5: a woman menopause and just go, Okay, who am I?
Speaker 5: Who do I want to be? And really, it's not
Speaker 5: about how I look. It's got to be how I feel.
Speaker 5: It's got to be how I feel. And I would
Speaker 5: say that over and over again, and how do I
Speaker 5: get myself feeling good again? So that's where I took
Speaker 5: it for me, because you know, I went from a
Speaker 5: size six to a size fourteen, and I was like,
Speaker 5: oh god, you know, but I was like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 5: just gonna own it. I'm just gonna lap it all
Speaker 5: up and this is just who I am, and it's okay.
Speaker 4: Sigh, sixteen fourteen. It's great. As long as I feel good,
Speaker 4: and that was my goal.
Speaker 1: Ginny, Allie and I were all with our partners pre
Speaker 1: and during and so far post Harry, I'm not there yet,
Speaker 1: oh okay, which was challenging in many ways. Naomi, you
Speaker 1: were dating at that time or with new partner, What
Speaker 1: was that like to navigate? Because this was not someone
Speaker 1: who'd seen you give birth and you know, had gone
Speaker 1: through all of those things with you, and you talked
Speaker 1: about feeling, oh, you've got to be young and hot,
Speaker 1: and what was that like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll go carefully here to protect the privacy
Speaker 3: of my relationship, but I will say it was a
Speaker 3: very awkward time because of the points you just made.
Speaker 3: I didn't know how squeamish he would be, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, the idea of exposing such personal things so
Speaker 3: that I knew I felt ashamed of how would he feel? Ultimately,
Speaker 3: keeping secrets is too exhausting.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to hide a patch when you're in
Speaker 1: had to hide a patch.
Speaker 4: It's hard to hide the moods.
Speaker 3: It's hard to you know, just show up in the
Speaker 3: ways that you may have in your twenties and thirties.
Speaker 3: And so ultimately I made the decision. I thought, well,
Speaker 3: this is a great litmus test. Let me see how
Speaker 3: it lands with this. And I just got really honest
Speaker 3: with him, and he was like, oh wow, cool, just
Speaker 3: tell me how I can help. What do I do?
Speaker 3: And empathy straight away, and you know, a few jokes
Speaker 3: to follow as well. But yes, we instantly he knew
Speaker 3: how to behave, he knew how to be gentle and
Speaker 3: show up and obviously he passed the litmus test.
Speaker 1: And now we're married, and I've seen the way he
Speaker 1: looks at you, and everyone should have someone that looks
Speaker 1: at them like he looks at you. So it clearly
Speaker 1: was not an impediment to your relationship.
Speaker 3: Just to add to that, I would say anyone who's
Speaker 3: going through that, because it is common. Marriages do break down,
Speaker 3: marriages will change, and people are meeting their second partners,
Speaker 3: and I think communication is absolutely key and it's the
Speaker 3: only way to educate. It's not a failing. It was
Speaker 3: always supposed to be part of what would happen with
Speaker 3: your hormonal cycle. And leaning into it, like you said,
Speaker 3: and owning it is just the only way.
Speaker 4: To deal with it.
Speaker 3: And the more people understand it, the more we normalize
Speaker 3: and open this conversation just get used to it the better.
Speaker 1: And I also think talking to our kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, gen X, we do like to talk. So
Speaker 1: my kids. I remember one poor one of them one
Speaker 1: night just said, I'm just wondering how long actually does
Speaker 1: perimenopause last. I got very angry. But they know a
Speaker 1: lot about it. You know, my teenagers and my oldest son,
Speaker 1: they know a lot about it. So that will be
Speaker 1: good for both the boys and the girls of the
Speaker 1: next generation. Giny, I want to ask about HRT before
Speaker 1: we move on, because when a lot of women go
Speaker 1: to their GP, something I didn't realize when I first
Speaker 1: heard the idea of HIT, I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: that'll give me cancer. Why was that in my head?
Speaker 1: And why do so many gps give such bad advice
Speaker 1: about HRT and menopause.
Speaker 6: So I'm going to do a really quick reader's digest
Speaker 6: I know I'm a boomer, a reader's digest version of
Speaker 6: what happened and to make HRT get linked to cancer
Speaker 6: and why so many women are terrified of taking it today.
Speaker 6: So back in the nineteen nineties, a lot of American studies,
Speaker 6: which were population studies, you took entire groups of people
Speaker 6: they had found that in fact, women who were taking
Speaker 6: hormone replacement therapy. Back in those days, it was synthetic
Speaker 6: hormone replacement therapy. We don't tend to use that very
Speaker 6: much anymore. But those people who were on that HRT
Speaker 6: actually had less heart disease. So the National Institutes of
Speaker 6: Health from America said, hey, let's do a massive study
Speaker 6: one hundred and ten thousand women. Let's get them older women,
Speaker 6: average age sixty three when we start this trial, well
Speaker 6: passed when you need your HRT for menopause symptoms. Let's
Speaker 6: do a study where we give half HRT and half
Speaker 6: placebo and see what happens whether it prevents heart disease.
Speaker 6: Spoiler alert, it doesn't. Doesn't prevent heart disease, particularly in
Speaker 6: those older women. But what they found back in two
Speaker 6: thousand and two, who was that for every ten thousand
Speaker 6: women who were taking a placebo, they had thirty cases
Speaker 6: of breast cancer. For every ten thousand women taking the HRT,
Speaker 6: the synthetic HRT that we don't really use anymore, there
Speaker 6: were thirty eight cases of breast cancer. Now, as a
Speaker 6: result of that, plus the futility, it did not prevent
Speaker 6: heart disease. They actually canned the study. But the problem
Speaker 6: was they went to the press and the subtleties of
Speaker 6: that messaging, all anybody heard was HRT causes breast cancer.
Speaker 6: Now what in fact, if you took the group of
Speaker 6: women inside that study who were in their early fifties
Speaker 6: when they were given the HRT, they didn't get any
Speaker 6: extra breast cancer. And what it looks like is for
Speaker 6: body identical HRT very different to bioidentical. We can talk
Speaker 6: about that, but body identical HRT doesn't seem to have
Speaker 6: any increased risk of breast cancer, particularly when it's given
Speaker 6: to young women and particularly if you don't stay on
Speaker 6: it forever. And definitely every menopause society in the world
Speaker 6: today will say that the benefits of HRT for most
Speaker 6: women will weigh out weigh the risks. We don't give
Speaker 6: it to everybody, but just if you have symptoms, the
Speaker 6: benefits will outweigh the risks. But what happened after that
Speaker 6: two thousand and two study was shut down and what
Speaker 6: was called the Women's Health Initiative Study was there were
Speaker 6: hundreds of lawsuits, particularly in America, the lawsuit capital of
Speaker 6: the world, and in fact the drug company that made
Speaker 6: that form of HRT that was used in that trial
Speaker 6: went bankrupt and was sold off, and the parent company
Speaker 6: that ended up buying it had to settle three hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty million US dollars worth of lawsuits for women
Speaker 6: who had breast cancer. And every drug company in the
Speaker 6: world said, too hard. They rolled down the shutters on
Speaker 6: all of their women's health division, particularly for midlife women.
Speaker 6: They stopped doing research, they stopped teaching at university. I
Speaker 6: myself got zero training. I didn't even get an hour
Speaker 6: of training on menopause through my whole journey into general practice,
Speaker 6: and most doctors to this day know nothing about the
Speaker 6: management of menopause. Now that's going to impact all of you,
Speaker 6: because I see page every day who've gone to their
Speaker 6: GP and said I'd like to go on hormone replacement
Speaker 6: therapy and the GP says, that's dangerous. I'm not giving
Speaker 6: it to you. Your mother had breast cancer, you can't
Speaker 6: have it. No, that's definitely not the case.
Speaker 1: But there is this fear that has pervaded all of the.
Speaker 6: Women, and to this day, to my horror, there are
Speaker 6: still black box warnings on every form of HRT that most.
Speaker 1: Of us here what to back box warning.
Speaker 6: So that's a mandatory government led warning that says this
Speaker 6: thing can give you breast cancer. I mean you, and
Speaker 6: I will chuck out the packet inserts and.
Speaker 1: Just say, don't that on my packet. I ignore it.
Speaker 1: But they are there.
Speaker 6: Those warnings are there, and for women who take their
Speaker 6: hell seriously and actually read the packet inserts, that's terrify.
Speaker 1: Before we move on to identity, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask about this reinvention stage of life, which is one
Speaker 1: of the most positive things that come with being this
Speaker 1: age and going through this What should someone do, Like,
Speaker 1: if there is so much misinformation out there, what do
Speaker 1: you do? What's the first port of call?
Speaker 6: So I think, as I said, there are no two
Speaker 6: women who are the same, and even getting the right
Speaker 6: HRT formulation, it can take a lot of kissing a
Speaker 6: lot of frogs to get your handsome prints and get
Speaker 6: you to the place where you feel right. And you
Speaker 6: need to work with a doctor who will listen to you.
Speaker 6: Not everybody needs or wants HRT, and there are other
Speaker 6: options out there. It's not the only thing. The problem
Speaker 6: is with that fifty three symptoms that we talked about.
Speaker 6: To get all of them wrapped, up in a single treatment.
Speaker 6: Whether it's your joint pain or your mental health concerns,
Speaker 6: or your insomnia and your hot flushes and your itchy
Speaker 6: skin and your palpitations, there is only one treatment that
Speaker 6: will get rid of all of it and strengthen your
Speaker 6: bones and reduce your risk of bowel cancer. So yet
Speaker 6: that's just get armed with the fact and find a
Speaker 6: doctor who will listen to you.
Speaker 1: Up next, we talked about a lot of things that
Speaker 1: kiss us off, as you just heard, but there are
Speaker 1: actually a lot of positives to going through this phase
Speaker 1: of life. Stay with us because we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about those. I would like to talk about the freeing
Speaker 1: nature of what can happen in this life stage because
Speaker 1: we've talked and been honest about some of the more
Speaker 1: negative things, and hopefully there are more women won't go
Speaker 1: through it because there are more women speaking out now.
Speaker 4: But you decided to start.
Speaker 1: A business at this life stage. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of actors and celebrities who are doing skincare
Speaker 1: and doing makeup. Starting a line of menopause products is
Speaker 1: not the most sexiest choice you could have made. Why
Speaker 1: did you choose? You know, with the launch of Stripes
Speaker 1: to do this.
Speaker 3: I think given that I had been living with the
Speaker 3: secret for so long and feeling that shame and not
Speaker 3: being able to discuss it even amongst my friends. I
Speaker 3: did sort of crack jokes with my friends about having
Speaker 3: an estrogen dep and it was always met with a
Speaker 3: nervous laugh, you know. So I was like, Okay, that
Speaker 3: was a feeler check. No one else is in menopause
Speaker 3: around me, so I'll keep quiet. And I think after
Speaker 3: a certain number of years, you just get bored of that.
Speaker 3: And then I started to really just become my own
Speaker 3: advocate of how to piece meal all the information. And
Speaker 3: luckily the Internet was quite active by the fourth or
Speaker 3: fifth year of these symptoms, and so I was finding
Speaker 3: more and more information and going to different doctors. And
Speaker 3: like you say, if your doctor is not going to
Speaker 3: give you or hear you in the right way, then
Speaker 3: you really should just change your doctor. I'm to this
Speaker 3: day still learning more and I am deep, deep, deep
Speaker 3: into the research now having started the company. I mean, well,
Speaker 3: it's been percolating for three years now, but it's been
Speaker 3: on the shelves for a year in the US. I
Speaker 3: decided that I had to do it. I couldn't not
Speaker 3: do it because I needed a place to go. There
Speaker 3: was nowhere to go. There was no conversation. So I thought,
Speaker 3: what if there was a place to go for others,
Speaker 3: because no one should have to walk through this alone.
Speaker 3: I had already spent a lot of time with skincare
Speaker 3: because I had become a co founder of a company
Speaker 3: called Onder Beauty, which was because I was having dry,
Speaker 3: itchy skin, raging skin. And I'm an actor and I
Speaker 3: work on screen and have topply makeup all day long,
Speaker 3: and my skin was just yelling and screaming at me.
Speaker 3: So I had to sort of look into the ingredients
Speaker 3: that I was using that worked perfectly well for many years.
Speaker 3: I had to make adjustments there and I had to
Speaker 3: use gentler or ingredients. So I became passionate and well
Speaker 3: versed in ingredients. But then I started looking at all
Speaker 3: of these brands, and I'm talking like between seventy and
Speaker 3: eighty different brands, and I saw, yeah, that was good
Speaker 3: for this thing, and that was good for maybe my hair,
Speaker 3: and this was good for my body, and you know,
Speaker 3: but I don't like how they're speaking to me, you know,
Speaker 3: promising the world of this and throwing as a twenty
Speaker 3: eight year old up there to sell the product, and
Speaker 3: that doesn't feel good. I want to feel authenticity. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to suffer fools. I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: fed a whole bunch of nonsense. So it really became
Speaker 3: clear to me that a brand was needed to address
Speaker 3: all of the pain points, or as many as possible.
Speaker 3: We don't have estrogen, and by the way, the fear
Speaker 3: that you speak of literally women have come up to
Speaker 3: men said, is that estrogen in there? Because I can't
Speaker 3: take it? You know, Like, no, we don't have hormones
Speaker 3: in our products. But we have powerful active ingredients that
Speaker 3: have real good ways of hydrating, and ectoin and squalene,
Speaker 3: which is a paired combination of locking in the moisture
Speaker 3: and ectoin is an unbelievable smart ingredient that knows how
Speaker 3: to identify where water is needed and it can collect
Speaker 3: and multiply the water and lock it in. So the
Speaker 3: two things are in all of our products. I've got
Speaker 3: five here.
Speaker 1: This is Vadge of Honor. Yeah, can we talk about
Speaker 1: badges because I know everyone's been so excited to talk
Speaker 1: about badges. The Vadge moisturizer ile in the in the chemist.
Speaker 1: It's just not it's not one that you will find easily,
Speaker 1: and it's not one that you will probably be comfortable
Speaker 1: asking the very young, usually males, sales assistant to help
Speaker 1: you find.
Speaker 3: And it's not one you want to bump into anyone else.
Speaker 1: No, you don't want to pause too long there, and
Speaker 1: because of all the shame. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things to It's not just about your top, it's
Speaker 1: also about the bottom areas. I love that you've got
Speaker 1: two Vadge products. Yeah, what do they do?
Speaker 3: There's a lube as well, which is somewhere else. What's
Speaker 3: it called play oil oil? And it's called oh my
Speaker 3: glide and my Glide.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We've tried to have fun with the names because I
Speaker 3: love that you've heard us bitch and moan here and
Speaker 3: about all of the negatives. And they look they will
Speaker 3: look nice next to your bed or in your bedside table. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's not something that you have to necessarily hide. I
Speaker 3: wanted to have fun with the names and the color
Speaker 3: palette and feel like this is actually a vibrant time
Speaker 3: in our lives. Look at all of you women here,
Speaker 3: You're all doing fantastic things. It's not the end. There's
Speaker 3: so much life to live. We know we're living longer now,
Speaker 3: and shifting the narrative was the most important thing for me.
Speaker 3: Do not hide in shame and secrecy, come out and
Speaker 3: own it, and set yourself up better for the last
Speaker 3: part of your life, which is possibly a third even
Speaker 3: a half of your life. I've got two grandma's guys
Speaker 3: who are still living. One's one hundred and one's ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Alie, I wanted to ask you about you know, you
Speaker 1: spoke really movingly and thank you for sharing that about
Speaker 1: your rock bottom essentially. But then when we were talking
Speaker 1: in the green room about what happened after that and
Speaker 1: what benefits this life stage is brought to you, can
Speaker 1: you speak a bit about that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, I think, like anything in life sometimes is
Speaker 5: sort of like what can menopause like do for you?
Speaker 5: And that was my as I said, that was my
Speaker 5: goal was sort of like I knew I needed to
Speaker 5: move out of this depressed state. I knew I needed
Speaker 5: to help my body, and in doing that, there was
Speaker 5: so much that.
Speaker 4: Happened during that time.
Speaker 5: I can honestly say I'm so grateful I've went through
Speaker 5: perimenopause and menopause, and I feel like it's something that
Speaker 5: it can feel like a doom and gloom thing on
Speaker 5: your horizon, but there's like an allocating of your tools
Speaker 5: that start to happen as well. That's what I found.
Speaker 5: Like I'd always been this outgoing give a give a
Speaker 5: giver who needs this? That who needs this? And I
Speaker 5: was bottom of the list constantly, And when perimenopause and
Speaker 5: menopause hit, all of a sudden, I became top of
Speaker 5: the list. And I loved being top of the list.
Speaker 5: I was co top. I didn't sort of move anyone
Speaker 5: else further down. But but why.
Speaker 1: Like what changed? What took you to the top of
Speaker 1: the list? Just because you were so unpleasant to be around?
Speaker 1: Everyone else went away? That's what happened to me.
Speaker 5: It was just those things of going what do I need?
Speaker 5: Just it was that simple question what do I actually need?
Speaker 5: Because I'd felt so crap and I was like, what
Speaker 5: do I need to make myself feel better? I need
Speaker 5: to pull back from work, I need to have a massage.
Speaker 5: I need to go for a walk. I need to
Speaker 5: just go to my room and just cry for a bit.
Speaker 5: I need to go read a book, and it was
Speaker 5: just it was little subtle things, and you know what
Speaker 5: I really needed to do. I really needed to start
Speaker 5: being kind of how I spoke to myself. That was
Speaker 5: a big thing for me because I'd been through the shame.
Speaker 5: I'd been through, you know, even years before perimenopause. I
Speaker 5: was very very hard on the way I looked and whatever.
Speaker 5: A lot of women do that, I guess, but I
Speaker 5: was like, you know what, Alie, enough, it's actually enough
Speaker 5: that you're doing this, like you're going through a tough time,
Speaker 5: You've got years ahead of you.
Speaker 4: Can you just be nice? Just be nice to yourself.
Speaker 5: So I really pulled back on that self critical talk,
Speaker 5: and I felt so much free them and that I
Speaker 5: said no when I wanted to say no. I said
Speaker 5: yes when I wanted to say yes. And I started
Speaker 5: trying new things. I picked up different careers, I let
Speaker 5: go of fear of things, and so I actually found
Speaker 5: an incredibly invigorating to go through perimenopause and get to
Speaker 5: that I'm now post. But I also think at the
Speaker 5: same time, it's like to have that experience of the
Speaker 5: challenges was actually really what gave me that base to
Speaker 5: then spring forward into Yeah, just a much much better
Speaker 5: part of my life.
Speaker 4: I'm happier now and healthier now than I ever have been.
Speaker 1: Ginny. One of the things that a lot of women
Speaker 1: experience around this time is a change in libido, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they feel that it might be that I don't
Speaker 1: love their partner anymore. And it's no accident that a
Speaker 1: lot of women get divorced at this time. What do
Speaker 1: you see and what advice do you give to the
Speaker 1: women that you see in terms of managing that, because
Speaker 1: it might not be in concert with the partner in
Speaker 1: their life if they have one.
Speaker 6: Okay, so a couple of things. First of all, your vagina,
Speaker 6: we have to talk about her. Your vagina has estrogen receptors,
Speaker 6: kind of said that they're everywhere. They help her to
Speaker 6: make the self cleaning fluid that is the vaginal discharge
Speaker 6: five meals is normal.
Speaker 1: You never miss it so.
Speaker 6: Much until you don't have it, because sex is really
Speaker 6: uncomfortable and you're not going to get libido happening if
Speaker 6: it feels like your vagina is being rammed by sandpaper
Speaker 6: covered battering ramp, it's just not going.
Speaker 1: To be fun, not sexy.
Speaker 6: No, write that down. So note to self, Reno the
Speaker 6: VJJ first.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: The other thing is, if you are feeling really hot,
Speaker 6: another body on top of you is just your worst nightmare.
Speaker 6: And if you are exhausted and your hottest bedroom fantasy
Speaker 6: involves a sleep mask and a pillow, it's just not
Speaker 6: good for the libido. Let's say you've worked all of
Speaker 6: that out. There are two types of low libido. Low
Speaker 6: lobido number one is I really don't want this. I'm
Speaker 6: going to make an excuse. I'm going to be on
Speaker 6: the phone. I'm going to be brushing my teeth for
Speaker 6: an hour, hoping.
Speaker 1: He falls asleep.
Speaker 6: But then occasionally you give in, you do it, and
Speaker 6: you go, you know what, that was actually quite good.
Speaker 6: I should probably do that more often. We call that
Speaker 6: being married. That's very common.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: Low libido number two is quite different. Okay, that is, well,
Speaker 6: that's ten minutes of my life. I don't get back.
Speaker 6: I didn't orgasm, you can't orgasm, you have no sexual fantasies,
Speaker 6: and you never ever masturbate. Now we never talk about this,
Speaker 6: but that is called hyperactive sexual desire disorder. I ask
Speaker 6: all my new patients about this. They're just horrified, predible,
Speaker 6: and ask them about their masturbation.
Speaker 1: But when we do.
Speaker 6: Ask, there's a reason because if you meet the criteria
Speaker 6: for hyperactive sexual desire disorder, which.
Speaker 1: Is more common. I'm not asking for a show of hands,
Speaker 1: but statistically, but if you want to but where about
Speaker 1: ten percent.
Speaker 6: Of the population fit that criteria and you have low
Speaker 6: testosterone levels, the advice of the International Menopause Society is
Speaker 6: that you would benefit from testosterone. Now, in the case
Speaker 6: of women, we are very lucky here in Australia. We
Speaker 6: have a product that's formulated here and manufactured.
Speaker 1: Here in Australia.
Speaker 6: You put a little bit like on kind of around
Speaker 6: your bikini line, keep changing it otherwise you're going to
Speaker 6: grow black hair where you don't want it on your belly.
Speaker 1: As if the patch is not off putting enough.
Speaker 6: So is it a cream or it's a cream and
Speaker 6: you put one meal on a day and then we
Speaker 6: retest your testosterone levels. But it is a game changer
Speaker 6: as to whether it gives you other benefits. Brain benefits,
Speaker 6: gets rid of your brain fag, gets rid of depression.
Speaker 6: Have any of you heard of doctor Louise Newsoen in
Speaker 6: the UK. Yes, I'm a big fan of hers. She
Speaker 6: runs multiple clinics in the UK, and she has actually
Speaker 6: a data scientist working within her clinics, so everybody has
Speaker 6: di identified data. According to her data, testosterone is very
Speaker 6: powerful for brain fog, very powerful for strength, but also
Speaker 6: very powerful for depression as well. Now that data is
Speaker 6: not good enough, we would not call that a randomized
Speaker 6: plus ABO controlled trial at this point. According to international guidelines,
Speaker 6: you would only get that if you have hyperactive sexual
Speaker 6: desire disorder, but you're probably going to get a few
Speaker 6: other benefits.
Speaker 1: Throwning Wow, it's a lot to take in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, I'll say I just added that to my routine.
Speaker 3: I had tried it earlier on and I didn't like
Speaker 3: it at the time that I tried it, And this
Speaker 3: is just a testament to what you said before about
Speaker 3: hormones going up and down, and obviously I didn't need
Speaker 3: it that much. I even got like a little bit
Speaker 3: of that, oh you know, like the male kind of rage,
Speaker 3: I suppose, so I stopped it, and then recently I've
Speaker 3: added it. In America, we're given drops. Do you not
Speaker 3: like those?
Speaker 1: Just not great absorption? Okay, just stock up while you're here,
Speaker 1: because because they sell me. But I actually I'll give
Speaker 1: you negotiate your tree to.
Speaker 4: Speak to the brain fog.
Speaker 3: Yes, it makes me clearer and more focused in say
Speaker 3: a meeting or you know, a situation where you have
Speaker 3: to be more on top of things, more in control.
Speaker 6: And because we're not trying to turn you into a man,
Speaker 6: we're not giving you the kind of testosterone levels that
Speaker 6: are going to actually make you turn into a bloke.
Speaker 1: We're trying to get.
Speaker 6: Your testosterone levels up to a premenopausal woman's test austerone levels.
Speaker 4: That's all I've heard.
Speaker 3: It can if you overdo it, your clitoris can change.
Speaker 1: It does it grows, You can grow a penis. Don't
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 6: Not Attractive's so many things today, But will continue to
Speaker 6: monitor your blood levels.
Speaker 1: We're giving you.
Speaker 6: Really tiny amounts, hopefully not mandatory for every menopause check.
Speaker 6: If you want to avoid the doctor, that's.
Speaker 1: It's an option. I wanted to ask all of you
Speaker 1: actually about the brain fog because for me, that was
Speaker 1: one of the things I struggled with most, and it's
Speaker 1: responsible for a lot of women leaving the workforce. We've
Speaker 1: seen data on that it does happen. I know that
Speaker 1: in terms of my self esteem it really affected it
Speaker 1: because I, you know, trying to run a business. I
Speaker 1: pride myself on being pretty sharp, and I just really
Speaker 1: affected my self esteem. Ali, was brain fog something that
Speaker 1: you experienced or can't you remember?
Speaker 4: What is our brain? Yeah? Absolutely definitely.
Speaker 5: And I was always the one that held the memory
Speaker 5: in the partnership between me and Cam, like always got
Speaker 5: brain fog, so he would always rely on me to
Speaker 5: remember people's names and birthdays and stuff, and I just
Speaker 5: that just started slipping away. So yeah, that was definitely something,
Speaker 5: and it's still there, like it's I'm not.
Speaker 4: As sharp as I used to be for sure.
Speaker 5: But on that topic, I was just sent just recently
Speaker 5: a preview of a book it's coming out next year.
Speaker 5: She's a neurologist, a top neurologist in Australia, Lisa mcconysconi Miscony.
Speaker 5: She's written a book called Menopause Brain. And they actually
Speaker 5: do imaging.
Speaker 1: Remember I'm glad between the four of us we could
Speaker 1: remember the names.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited.
Speaker 5: And they did imaging of perimenopause, menopause and post menopause
Speaker 5: and how the brain actually changes, and it was I
Speaker 5: thought that was so interesting because you know, this idea
Speaker 5: that we're sort of left as women that I'm going
Speaker 5: crazy or I don't know, I just feel off. And
Speaker 5: that's why I think part of the challenge of going
Speaker 5: to a doctor is because you can't often define what
Speaker 5: you're feeling. You just don't feel like yourself. And the
Speaker 5: more information that we have to go, yes, that is
Speaker 5: actually a real thing is exciting to me, and I
Speaker 5: think that helps more women to go, this is actually
Speaker 5: what's happening. The brain fog is real because I can
Speaker 5: now there's a book where there's other doctors talking about it.
Speaker 4: So yeah, long answer, but yeah, I had brain fog. No,
Speaker 4: that was great.
Speaker 3: And if I can add to it, like we should
Speaker 3: start this conversation in sex ed at school when they
Speaker 3: start the conversation about puberty. This is the bookend. It's
Speaker 3: an adult version of it.
Speaker 1: You know, take it. That's us puberty, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Basically, I know I've sat here making jokes about hormones
Speaker 3: and everything. I take it very seriously, and I know
Speaker 3: it's not everyone's choice or possibly not safe for everyone,
Speaker 3: but to have your doctor walk you through it is
Speaker 3: absolutely key to if we could have just a simple
Speaker 3: medical alignment on what's going on. Because there are so
Speaker 3: many doctors that disagree with each other and still uphold
Speaker 3: this bad messaging. We need to know that we need
Speaker 3: better research for women.
Speaker 4: It's just not enough.
Speaker 3: We're living longer, so why can't we be better set up?
Speaker 3: And you have to be a little bit of your
Speaker 3: own best advocate. But you also need to demand more
Speaker 3: from your doctors. And it's absolutely true. I've sat in
Speaker 3: many of these panels and watched surveys play out. They
Speaker 3: are not trained at all. It's up to them to
Speaker 3: get their training.
Speaker 1: So you have to trust yourself.
Speaker 3: But now with all of the information just arising as
Speaker 3: this conversation's opened up in the last couple of years,
Speaker 3: you can go at least equip with the right amount
Speaker 3: of questions and advocate for yourself.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think has just been
Speaker 1: so fantastic about living in this time now is we
Speaker 1: all talked about the secrecy, the shame, the stigma, the
Speaker 1: lack of information. I know when at Noma MEA we
Speaker 1: did the very very summit a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: there were tens of thousands of women that were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, me too, me too. Because I think
Speaker 1: one of the most challenging things I know for me
Speaker 1: and many women said the same thing is that because
Speaker 1: the symptoms are so random, not random, but disparate, everything
Speaker 1: from hot flushes to brain fog to heavy periods to
Speaker 1: rage to libido, it can be very hard to understand
Speaker 1: that they're all part of the same thing. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I went to see an endocrinologist because I suspected
Speaker 1: that's what it was, and he actually said to me,
Speaker 1: you're the first patient i've seen today and I've seen
Speaker 1: fifteen that hasn't cried. And I said, I just got here.
Speaker 1: There's still time. And I was really grateful that I was.
Speaker 1: You know, he's named Professor John Eden, one of the
Speaker 1: early experts in menopause and perimenopause, and he talked me
Speaker 1: through HRT. Because I hadn't, I assumed that my mum
Speaker 1: wasn't on it. But when I spoke to her, she goes, oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: of course I'm on it. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: got on it too. And I also speak to women
Speaker 1: who are very nervous about it, and you've got to
Speaker 1: make the right decision for you. But women talking about
Speaker 1: it now, I think this is just such a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: In the same way that we talk about mental health
Speaker 1: now and a generation ago we didn't. You know, Ginny,
Speaker 1: what is the biggest the biggest misconception about this phase
Speaker 1: of life?
Speaker 6: Like you guys, I hadn't heard of perimenopause, and I
Speaker 6: had a lot of misconceptions doctor, and I'm a adult
Speaker 6: doctor and I was doing women's health. And I'm so
Speaker 6: ashamed now cancel me for saying that. I know she's
Speaker 6: a woman, I know she's not a girl. But I
Speaker 6: feel now that I let the patients down because I
Speaker 6: had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: And I'm really lucky.
Speaker 6: That I host a podcast which is educational for doctors,
Speaker 6: and we had so many menopause specialists coming on, and
Speaker 6: every time I would hear someone like John Eden or
Speaker 6: Professor Rod Baber or Professor Susan Davis. Australia's got an
Speaker 6: unbelievable menopause specialist, I would think, I don't know any
Speaker 6: of this.
Speaker 1: This is a black hole in my knowledge.
Speaker 6: When the publishers of this book came to me and
Speaker 6: said we would like you to write a book on menopause,
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 1: Like, fuck off, how old do you think I am? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then and then I was like, oh wait, fifty yes,
Speaker 1: but were you a bit like that's not really Oh
Speaker 1: how I see myself?
Speaker 6: I was like, I'm young, like joe't you want me
Speaker 6: to write a parenting book on toddlers?
Speaker 1: But no? But then I was like okay, and I
Speaker 1: like fell into that.
Speaker 6: You're like, there's so much to know and now there's
Speaker 6: like a network of like doctin most phenomenal handbook.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 6: So when I first started practicing in menopause, because.
Speaker 1: It hooks you in, because you can do more.
Speaker 6: Good for people in this space in life than you
Speaker 6: can for any other group of people at all.
Speaker 1: It's so addictive.
Speaker 6: When I first started in this space, people would be
Speaker 6: very tentative coming to see me and really sheepish and
Speaker 6: what else could I do?
Speaker 1: I don't really want to do hormones.
Speaker 6: Now I'm very likely to have a forty one year
Speaker 6: old woman who says, Hi, I'm crying all the time.
Speaker 6: Can I have hormone replacement therapy? I'm like, wo, tanto,
Speaker 6: tell me about your periods.
Speaker 1: But a lot of that.
Speaker 6: I am really great full to the other three women
Speaker 6: on this panel who've made an enormous difference. I think
Speaker 6: starting with you may I remember when we first started
Speaker 6: talking about the Very Pery Summit. I was like, that
Speaker 6: is so brave. You're going to go out there and
Speaker 6: say that you're perimenopausal. And I think Ali's book coming out,
Speaker 6: but also I think particularly to Naomi, because the world
Speaker 6: has changed because of you and everybody in this room,
Speaker 6: and everybody is.
Speaker 1: A beneficiary of that. So thank you. Just to wrap up,
Speaker 1: I wanted sort of just go through and ask each
Speaker 1: of you to sum up where you're at, you know now,
Speaker 1: with your symptoms, with your outlook, and what's great about
Speaker 1: being in your fifties.
Speaker 5: My people, please, is pretty much gone to sleep. I
Speaker 5: find myself feeling way more creative than I ever have before.
Speaker 5: I feel like I'm ready to sort of try new things.
Speaker 5: It's a weird thing, like I think I'd had this
Speaker 5: idea that you got stuck in one line of work
Speaker 5: you just you couldn't change. You're too old to do this.
Speaker 5: For me, I could go do another course on something,
Speaker 5: or change complete careers and do something else that invigorates me.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to be a grandma.
Speaker 5: I'm not that my kids are pregnant, but I'm excited
Speaker 5: for that phase of life. Yeah, there's just there's so
Speaker 5: much more that I want to sort of chew off
Speaker 5: and eat Jimmy.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, I'm still in perimenopause and I've had a
Speaker 6: very easy journey. I feel very guilty about saying it.
Speaker 6: My worst thing was very heavy bleeding, so I needed.
Speaker 1: To have How do you know you're still in perry
Speaker 1: Because I've got regular periods, so reasonably regular ish. But
Speaker 1: if you have a marina like I do, I do.
Speaker 1: Everyone wanted to know that, it can be hard to know.
Speaker 1: So a marina for those playing along at home is
Speaker 1: an IUD. Why don't we get the adoptor to tell
Speaker 1: us where the marina is instead of me?
Speaker 6: So it's a little device that sits inside your uterus
Speaker 6: and it has progesterone that comes out every single day.
Speaker 6: It is a synthetic jestone, one of the old school ones.
Speaker 6: We don't have an available marina with the new body identical.
Speaker 1: It means that you don't get your period, so it
Speaker 1: can be heart well, sorry, it's for some of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah people, I mean I still get my period because
Speaker 1: that's what it's got one too. Yeah, I've had one
Speaker 1: since my daughter was born. And she's twenty six now,
Speaker 1: so I just keep changing it every five years. But
Speaker 1: I definitely knew something was wrong when I was hosting
Speaker 1: radio at two GB. If anyone knows anything about.
Speaker 6: What two GB is, it's not the radio station where
Speaker 6: it's really easy to do the walk of shame.
Speaker 1: I imagine there aren't free tampons in the bathroom. There are.
Speaker 6: I'm coma where they've worked out that no nobody steals
Speaker 6: tampons when you keep them at work. We actually, the
Speaker 6: Sisterhood says you just have respect for the fact that
Speaker 6: nobody wants to do the walk of shame. So when
Speaker 6: I had a massive flood into my jenes in the
Speaker 6: middle of a radio show and had to do the
Speaker 6: walk of shame, and you know what, is there anybody
Speaker 6: else in the building with a vagina and a tampon? No,
Speaker 6: and no was not able to go to the local
Speaker 6: seven line and just had to use a stacker toiler baker.
Speaker 6: That's how I worked out that I had a pollop
Speaker 6: and I had that change. But other than that, I've
Speaker 6: had a very easy pery. But being part a tiny part,
Speaker 6: but being ever so small a part of this movement
Speaker 6: that is helping women not go through what our mothers
Speaker 6: did and how they suffered, and how they all had
Speaker 6: hysterectomies at early ages for no reason, and how they
Speaker 6: were shamed and stigmatized and couldn't talk to us about it.
Speaker 6: Playing that little role makes every day so exciting and
Speaker 6: just an absolute thrill to be part of it.
Speaker 1: Naomi, want to finish with you. You've come out, you've
Speaker 1: overcome the stigma, the shame, you've launched a business, you've remarried.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty exciting time of your life from the outside.
Speaker 1: How's it feeling on the inside. Great?
Speaker 3: But first, I'm married for the first time.
Speaker 1: I will say first, yeah, which was really lovely white
Speaker 1: Well we all saw were so sheep.
Speaker 4: I feel so and I lovely Sorry, Oh thank you,
Speaker 4: I think so too.
Speaker 3: I feel like being on the other side of it now,
Speaker 3: understanding everything we've been through.
Speaker 4: Everything.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason I called it stripes was that
Speaker 3: this is a time to shine. This is a time
Speaker 3: to feel your best and feel like you can hold
Speaker 3: your head high. Your cumulative experiences matter, and you've earned
Speaker 3: your stripes. And so I wanted to sort of reinvent
Speaker 3: this narrative and make us feel like proud of this time.
Speaker 3: We do get to the other side and feel like
Speaker 3: there's a reclaiming of oneselves. Our hormones have driven us
Speaker 3: entirely to this point, and sometimes not always in the
Speaker 3: best direction, and so it's actually nice to be on
Speaker 3: the other side of it. And yes, I still have symptoms. Yes,
Speaker 3: I mean I've still we were talking about it in
Speaker 3: the green room. I've got a frozen shoulder, and I
Speaker 3: still get hot at night.
Speaker 1: Sometimes. HRT is not a.
Speaker 3: Silver bullet, but it is the gold standard and it's
Speaker 3: safe for me.
Speaker 1: So I feel good.
Speaker 3: I feel my best. I'm open to trying new things.
Speaker 3: I'm leaning into saying yes to as many opportunities and
Speaker 3: things that I haven't tried before. I don't care about
Speaker 3: the small shit anymore, or I give you less shits
Speaker 3: about it, And I feel like alive and like there's
Speaker 3: so much more to do. And I'm encouraged that we're
Speaker 3: normalizing this conversation between all of us that will be
Speaker 3: the last generation to have shame about it, and all
Speaker 3: of your daughters and younger sisters around you are going
Speaker 3: to feel well set up, and to me, that's great news.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm just happy that you guys are here
Speaker 3: to listen, because that means you're interested and invested to.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that. We certainly did. We had
Speaker 1: such a good time as I hope you could hear
Speaker 1: on that panel. I highly recommend follow all of these
Speaker 1: women on Instagram if you want to hear more from them,
Speaker 1: and we've got so many more resources at muma mia.
Speaker 1: If you are going through perimenopause or menopause, we'll put
Speaker 1: a link to those in the show notes. The executive
Speaker 1: producer of No fil Day is Kimberly Bradish, with sound
Speaker 1: production on this episode by Teagan Sadler and Madeline Juanni.
Speaker 1: I'm mea Friedman and thanks for supporting women's media.