175 - Mood, mental health and hormones with Dr Clair Crockett

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

Dr Louise Newson

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Medicine

4.8 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The focus of this year’s World Menopause Day is cognition and mood. In this episode, Dr Louise Newson talks to Dr Clair Crockett, a GP and menopause specialist with an interest in mood, mental health and hormones. Clair’s interest in the topic stems from her own experience of escalating anxiety, low mood and intrusive thoughts in the premenstrual phase of her cycle during her mid-to-late 30s. Through her own research, she looked for ways to help her symptoms including through lifestyle changes, supplements and antidepressants. While these all helped some aspects of her mental health, it wasn’t until she began taking HRT that the premenstrual mental health symptoms eased. The experts discuss the importance of considering hormones when helping women experiencing mental health problems and outline some of the ways they are working to improve education about menopause and mental health amongst healthcare professionals. Clair’s tips to women with mental health symptoms in perimenopause and menopause: Track your symptoms and periods, the balance app is a good way to do this. This will make it easier to relay to your healthcare professional when you see them. Ask who has an interest in women’s health in your GP practice so you can see the most appropriate person. Tackling mental health in perimenopause and menopause is multi-faceted, it can take a while to get it right through a combination of taking HRT, your food choices, exercise, and doing work that inspires you. Make peace with your body image and don’t let it stop your progress. If you’d like to read more about Clair’s personal experience of mental health and hormones, you can read her story here.

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. 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 on my podcast I've got with me, Dr Claire Crockett, who's a doctor that I've
0:51.1	known for a little while now, but she's really become very important in
0:55.0	my life, like lots of people, because she's doing a huge amount of work, not just in the
0:59.7	clinic, but liaising with lots of people, bringing groups of like-minded people together
1:04.4	to really take forward lots of aspects of the menopause, but especially mental health
1:09.7	and the menopause, which many of you know is really, really crucial and really important and underserviced and
1:16.0	under-researched as well. So welcome Claire today. Hi, Louise. Thank you for having me. So I'm not
1:22.7	sure how long we've known each other, but it feels longer than it probably is. You were introduced by another
1:28.3	doctor that we both know, weren't you? And then you came and started working in the clinic,
1:33.3	but you're sort of a bit like me, really. It's taking over your life, thinking about perimenopause
1:37.9	and menopause. Yeah, that's right, I think. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I was introduced by one of the a doctor that you knew that I had
1:47.0	worked with as well and she put us in touch with one another. And yeah, as you said, the perimenopause
1:53.3	and menopause and mental health in relation to that in particular is something that I'm really
1:58.2	interested and passionate about. So if you sort of look back in time, so certainly if I'd met you as a medical student,
2:05.9	I wouldn't have ever heard about the perimenopause.
2:08.3	I would have known that the menopause causes few hot flushes and periods to stop.
2:13.4	But I wouldn't have known anything about the Association of Mental Health and Female Hormones at all, actually.
2:19.2	Were you aware of it at all when you were a medical student?
2:22.2	No, not at all, I don't think.
	...

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