121 - Celebrating World Menopause Day: supporting one another

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

Dr Louise Newson

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Medicine

4.8 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special episode, released on World Menopause Day 2021, Dr Louise Newson talks to two women about their own experiences of menopause. Melanie is a midwife from Birmingham who talks about her ongoing challenges of coping with menopausal symptoms, getting the right support at work, and finding a treatment that works for her. Grace is in her 50s and went through an early menopause in her late 30s. She struggled over the years to be listened to by healthcare professionals and have her needs understood as a gay woman. After watching the documentary with Davina McCall, Grace felt empowered to push for the help she knew she needed. Melanie and Grace’s conversation with Louise aptly illustrates what World Menopause Day is all about – raising awareness about the effects of menopause on women’s health and wellbeing globally, and elevating voices of those going through the menopause from all cultural backgrounds and sexual orientation. As Louise says, we cannot fully celebrate World Menopause Day until all women, all over the world are able to get the help and support they need. Grace and Melanie’s top reasons for speaking out for WMD: Educating others about the effects of the menopause is so important. Women need support and to know they are not alone – it’s not that something’s wrong with them. Get ready for the menopause, it’s inevitable, embrace it, and be empowered to deal with it when the time comes. Regardless of your colour, religion, or sexual orientation, come together and support one another.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr. Louise Newsome and welcome to my podcast. I'm a GP and menopause specialist and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon.
0:20.7	I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon. I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause support app called Balance.
0:29.9	On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based
0:36.5	information and advice about both the perimenopause and the
0:40.9	menopause. So today we're doing a double act actually. I've got two lovely ladies with me
0:48.7	on the podcast and we're going to be discussing obviously the menopause but we're going to be
0:54.1	specifically talking about World Menopause, but we're going to be specifically
0:54.5	talking about World Menopause Day. And for me, it's very exciting because every year that I've
0:59.3	been doing work in the Menopause, the World Menopause Day has got bigger and noisier and more
1:04.2	spoken about, which I think is great. We need to keep talking about the menopause, but we need
1:08.4	to think about it as being something positive rather than something negative. And the only way we can do that is by instigating change
1:15.1	and ensuring women receive the right help, support and treatment. So I've got Melanie and Grace.
1:20.4	So if I start with you, Melanie, first. Could you just introduce yourself to our listeners and then
1:25.1	I'll come over to Grace? Right. So I'm Melanie from Birmingham.
1:29.2	I'm 56 and I've been going through the menopause probably, probably before I even knew it really.
1:35.5	But I can say that from about the age of 51 I kind of really noticed my symptoms. Yeah. So have you
1:43.4	received some help for your symptoms? I have. So at around
1:48.2	the age of 51, I kind of went to my GP who was really very supportive. Great. And she gave me
1:54.2	the patches, which I had for a good while. Now, the patches worked with me for about a year or probably nearly two years, but then I
2:03.3	started to have side effects and I started to get a lot of pain in my breast, which really panicked
2:08.9	me. I stopped taking it straight away because I was just like beside myself. And I went for a
2:15.3	mammogram, which came back absolutely fine. I went back to see my GP and I requested to a mammogram which came back absolutely fine.
	...

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