026 - Surgical Menopause - Dr Rebecca Lewis & Dr Louise Newson

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

Dr Louise Newson

Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.7 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week's episode, Dr Louise Newson chats to her good friend, Dr Rebecca Lewis, who is also a clinical director at Newson Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre. Together they discuss surgical menopause. Surgical menopause can often be very different to a natural menopause because it happens very suddenly. Women who have their ovaries removed during an operation are plunged into the menopause straight away. In addition, women who have a hysterectomy without their ovaries being removed still have a higher risk of an early menopause. Dr Newson and Dr Lewis discuss the most effective ways of treating surgical menopause.

Dr Lewis' Three Take Home Tips:

Think about menopause before your surgery - be aware of the symptoms you may experience.
Discuss HRT with your surgeon before surgery.
Have a solution and treatment plan in place before the operation.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Newsome Health Menopause podcast. I'm Dr Louise Newsome, a GP and menopause specialist,
0:14.5	and I run the Newston Health Menopause and wellbeing centre here in Stratford-upon-Avon.
0:29.5	So I'm delighted today. I've got Rebecca Lewis with me again. We've already recorded one podcast together. But today we're going to talk slightly differently about women who have
0:35.5	had a surgical menopause. So women who have had really an
0:40.2	enforced menopause. So welcome, Rebecca. Hello, Louise. To some of you who might have
0:45.6	listened to Rebecca's and me talking before might know or might know from the website, Rebecca is a
0:50.2	very dear friend and colleague and she is also one of the medical directors here in my clinic
0:55.0	in Stratford-Pron-Avon. So thank you for coming this morning. That's a pleasure. Nice to be here.
0:59.5	Obviously we see lots of menopausal women, don't we, from all ages. And as a lot of you know,
1:05.5	listening, the average age of the menopause in the UK is 51. So that's a year after your last period, you can be
1:12.5	officially menopausal. And usually it's because there's a natural decline in our ovaries,
1:17.4	the hormones drop. But for some women, they have a so-called surgical menopause, don't they?
1:22.6	So explain what that means. So, I mean, some women obviously have to have a hysterectomy for various reasons and removal of the ovaries as well. That's called a total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo ufrectomy. And then these women are plunged into the menopause. And I use the word plunge because it literally is that they can go from a normal level of hormones to suddenly
1:45.7	having no hormones at all and these are the important hormones to help with our functioning
1:51.4	estrogen and testosterone and the ovary that's the main producer of these hormones of the ovary so
1:57.7	when we lose these hormones we're plunged into into the menopause. And so the symptoms
2:03.5	can come on very quickly and dramatically and can really flaw some women. And it's a shock because
2:09.5	often they're so consumed with their actual operation and for the reason they're having their
2:13.7	operation, the sort of menopause effect is forgotten.
2:18.1	Yeah, so it's not always spoken about.
2:19.7	I mean, we, as you know, work out of the nice guidance, the National Institute of Health
2:23.5	and Care Excellence, Menopals guidelines that are very clear, aren't they, that women who are
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr Louise Newson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dr Louise Newson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.