The Problem With Hormone Therapy: Dr Louise Newson

The Problem With...

James Smith

Society & Culture

4.9 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Louise Newson, world-leading menopause specialist and hormone health expert, joins James Smith to expose the truth about hormones, testosterone, and modern medicine’s biggest blind spot. From the history of contraception to the stigma around testosterone and the rise of synthetic hormones, Dr. Newson argues that hormonal health isn’t a “women’s issue”, it’s a foundation of human health we’ve ignored for decades. Dr. Newson is a GP, menopause specialist, and founder of the Balance Menopause app, used by millions worldwide. In this powerful conversation, she reveals how hormones influence mental health, metabolism, fertility, and performance… and why balancing them could prevent depression, dementia, and chronic disease. She explains: ◼️ Why testosterone isn’t just a “male hormone” and how it transforms mood and energy ◼️ The dark history of contraception and its lasting health impact ◼️ How inflammation and modern diets disrupt hormonal balance ◼️ Why women are prescribed antidepressants instead of HRT ◼️ The real science behind hormone replacement, fertility, and GLP-1 drugs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Testosterone can help with mental health, depression, psychosis.
0:03.7	It's not just produced in the testis in the ovary, that testosterone is also made in our brains.
0:09.6	We need to be thinking about our hormones in the same way that we think about feroxin and insulin.
0:14.5	They're essential hormones for our house.
0:16.8	If a man has a synthetic testosterone, they will become infertile.
0:24.6	What is the problem with hormone treatments?
0:26.6	Where do I start, James?
0:28.6	Just the word hormone. Like, what is it? What does it mean? What does it mean to you?
0:33.6	A chemical signaling...
0:36.6	Compound. It's confusing, isn't it? Yeah. And you know what? I was talking to my mum. A chemical signaling compound.
0:38.2	It's confusing, isn't it?
0:39.3	Yeah.
0:39.8	And do you know what?
0:40.4	I was talking to my mum a few years ago, and she was like, Louise, I don't think people
0:44.5	know hormones are produced in our bodies.
0:47.7	It's like, of course they do, Mother.
0:49.4	And then I think, actually, I don't think people do, because as soon as you talk about
0:52.8	hormones, that's when people think,
0:55.0	that's tablets, that's injections, that's gels, that's, but actually a hormone is just a chemical messenger.
1:01.0	It's produced by various tissues, organs in our body, that go to every single cell in our body.
1:07.0	We've got hundreds of hormones, some we know about, some we don't.
1:10.0	But when I talk about hormones, everyone thinks it's all about HRT. But as a doctor talking about hormones, I could be talking about insulin or thyroxin or adrenaline or serotonin. These are all hormones. But we've just forgotten about those somehow.
	...

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