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.

On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based

information and advice about both the perimenopause and the

menopause.

On the podcast today, we're going to talk about something that is very, very common, actually,

about the effect of menopause and perimenopause in the workplace.

So I've got with me,

Emma Hammond, who I've known for a little while now, actually, who's a lawyer and doing a huge

amount of work in this area. So welcome Emma today. Thank you, Louise. So a few years ago,

if I'd met you maybe 10, 15 years ago, how different is your job now to how it would have been 15 years ago?

And if I'd said to you the word menopause, what would it have conjured up 15 years ago?

That's a really good question. So 15 years ago, let me do the maths. I was 37. So I knew

about the menopause from my mum. I knew that she started around the age of 50 by

fainting in the office. Gosh. That was her first indication. And I was asking questions then around

when it happened to her to think when it might happen to me. I'd only had my first child at 36.

So I was very much in the new mum phase rather than it thinking about what hormones may do to me regarding the perimenopause.

But work-wise, absolutely nothing happening that gave me an indication that women were experiencing issues in the workplace around menopause and perhaps being treated differently. Yeah, which is interesting

because if I'd met you, I would have been the similar age, we're both similar ages. So in my

late 30s, I didn't even know, I didn't really think about symptoms. And the only symptoms I was

really taught about was about hot flushes and sweats, but it's more about night sweats.

So I think, well, that's nighttime symptoms, actually.

So I hadn't really thought about it either.

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