BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm James Reynolds.

Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

In BBC OS conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences.

This time, women discuss perimenopause and brain fog.

Earlier this month, my colleague tech editor Zoe Kleinman was about to go live on TV to explain

a global outage affecting dozens of websites and apps. Millions would be watching. But Zoe kept forgetting a key technical phrase. I'm standing there on my own. There's a camera on me. There's big lights on me. Everything is completely silent. And I just kept thinking, I don't think I'm going to remember this phrase. And if I don't remember it, then I'm not going to be able to say anything else. And at the last minute, I just thought, do you know what? I have spent 20 years broadcasting without notes. I was trained to broadcast without notes. You know, there's a real thing about public speaking with not having notes. But I thought, I'm just going to have to hold a piece of paper with this phrase on it because I'm worried that I'm not going to manage it. So I did that. And afterwards, I came at it feeling like I'd failed actually. I felt

you know my professional pride I guess had been dented by this because it's something I've

never really had to do before and I decided to write about it and I was very unsure about

posting it but the response was absolutely astonishing. It's had hundreds of thousands of views that post.

I've had literally hundreds of messages, mainly from women,

although, you know, obviously there are other causes for brain fog as well,

expressing solidarity and women in all walks of life.

You know, I have an unusual job, I get that, Luke,

but teachers, people hosting workshops, people doing job interviews, people just trying to have conversations with the families at home and suddenly struggling for words or, you know, being halfway through a sentence and can't remember it. It really struck a chord with so many people. I had women stopping me in the street to talk about it. You know, they never do that to talk to me about quantum computing, but they did want to talk to me about brain fog. One person said, let's start a movement called hold the notes,

which I really like. So, you know, you may well see me holding notes a bit more often from now

when I feel empowered. Zoe Kleinman, speaking to my colleague Luke Jones during our daily live OS show.

Now, brain fog isn't a medical term, but it's that feeling of not being able to concentrate

or remember something.

For Zoe, it coincided with perimenopause, the start of the menopause, and the time in life

for women where hormone levels are changing.

Other symptoms can include hot flushes, low moods and problems sleeping.

...