Hello and welcome to Zoe Shorts, the Bite Size podcast where we discuss one topic

around science and nutrition. I'm Jonathan Wolfe and today I'm joined by Dr. Sarah

Berry. Today's subject is menopause supplements. So almost every woman goes

through menopause. It's a natural part of aging but it can come with really

serious symptoms that severely impact our day-to-day life. So it's no

surprise that people are turning to all sorts of supplements fairly. So that

makes sense Sarah. I guess the question is do any of these menopause supplements

actually work? Well menopause has been hugely understudied in the past and

women are still really underrepresented in health research. Says a lot we

don't know but there is a picture emerging. So let's hear more. So Jonathan the

menopause is the point in time when a woman's periods have stopped for 12

months which on average occurs when they're 51 years old but actually there

can be many years leading up to this point which we can call the perimenopause

phase. Now imagine a woman in perimenopause where she is in a stage of this

hormonal chaos as I like to call it where she may be experiencing a whole host

of symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, poor sleep and poor mood. And Sarah

every time I hear about this I'm just amazed at how this was never discussed

as I was growing up. So what's going on in someone's body that brings about

menopause? So during the perimenopause phase, estrogen and

progesterone fluctuate and their levels go up and down in a quite unpredictable

way causing this hormonal chaos. And so Sarah is it that change in these

hormone levels sort of going up and down that's causing a lot of these symptoms?

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