Hello, I'm Dr Louise Newsome, I'm a GP and menopause specialist working in Stratupon

Avon. This is the first of a series of podcasts that we're recording for women to learn more

about their menopause and their hormones. So we're very excited to be doing it in conjunction

with the Primary Care Women's Health Forum, which I'm one of the directors for.

So I'm here today with one of my lovely colleagues, Dr. Sarah Ball,

who's a fellow GP and a menopause expert.

So we're going to discuss today, and in fact in all the series we want to discuss different patients and so

it's a bit of a flying on the wall experience for other women to listen and hear what we get

up to in our day-to-day practice. So hi Sarah. Hello. So tell me about a lady that you

saw recently in the clinic. So a lady that has especially resonated with me recently as a lady who is 53 and she came

along to see us really because she's been experiencing symptoms which she was thought were related

to her hormones for a whole 10 years.

10 years.

Yes. Gosh. 10 years. Yes. And she had been to her hormones for a whole 10 years. 10 years? Yes. Yes.

And she had been to her GP on three occasions over that time.

And each time had asked about whether it could be related to hormones, but each time,

unfortunately, was given quite inaccurate

information. So what symptoms were she getting? So initially, so back when she was 43,

she was experiencing, she was aware that her periods had always been regular clockwork,

and they just weren't quite so regular, nothing too out of the ordinary,

but sometimes they were just a bit later, sometimes a little bit closer together.

But mainly she had quite a full-time high-powered job,

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