Welcome to the Newsome Health Menopause podcast.

I'm Dr Louise Newsome, a GP and menopause specialist,

and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and wellbeing centre here in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Today I'm really excited and delighted to have with me a colleague who works locally and also in London. I've got Sajad Rajpah with me, who works in Belgravia Dermatology and

also the Westbourne Centre in Birmingham.

So I wanted to talk today about skin because, as many of you know, when our estrogen levels

reduced during the perimenopause and menopause, it can affect everywhere, but it also can affect

our skin. So I just wanted to tap his amazing knowledge

and try and get as much information as possible in the next half an hour. So thank you for coming.

It's a pleasure, Louise. Thanks very much for the invitation to do this podcast. That's okay. So tell

me about skin. So before we talk about skin and menopause, skin is a really important organ, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. Skin is the largest organ in the body. And, you know, the average skin would contribute to 15 kilograms of your body weight.

See, it's amazing, isn't it? Because when you look at organs, you think about heart, lungs, liver, spleen,

but you don't, you think of the skin as just, it's a protective thing that covers us. But it's

more than that, isn't it? Absolutely. We often forget that the skin has a lot of functions in,

in the immune system, in fighting off infection, in protecting the skin, in also forming vitamin D as well.

So there are all sorts of different functions of the skin.

So that's a sunlight vitamin?

Yeah, that's absolutely it, the reaction from ultraviolet light to the skin.

And we see a lot of changes with the menopause because, of course, the reduction in estrogen in the body

causes changes to several layers of the skin. And I think the most common thing I would see in

regular practice is ladies complaining that their skin's becoming dry and itchy. I don't know

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