The Happy Menopause

Christmas can be a lot of fun and create some wonderful memories. But let’s face it, all that festive joy doesn’t happen by accident. Behind the scenes, pulling all the strings and juggling all the plates, there’s usually a woman making the magic happen. We really do take on a lot at this time of year. So, if you’re already feeling overwhelmed by all the planning, shopping, wrapping, prepping, and cooking that lies ahead, don’t worry—help is at hand.

In this episode, I’m chatting with Chartered Psychologist Jess Baker, the author...

 For many of us, alcohol is woven into our lives, whether it’s a glass of wine at dinner or a night out with friends. It provides the backdrop to most big occasions, both happy and sad. 

But how does it affect us during menopause, when our bodies are changing in so many ways? And how does it influence our hormones and our health? 

The festive season is fast approaching, and with that can come a lot of pressure, because there’s always a lot to do, and our social schedule can fill up alarmingly. So, thi...

This is a special episode which shines a spotlight on nutrition to celebrate World Menopause Day, It’s actually a re-release of one of my most popular episodes, which I thought you might like to discover or rediscover, because it’s packed with useful information and foodie tips. 

I thought it was important to focus on foods to balance out my other special, which is on this year’s WMD theme of HRT. In that episode, BMS menopause specialist Kathy Abernethy debunks some of the myths and mysteries around HRT. 

But whether you take HRT or not...

HRT (or MHT) isn’t natural territory for The Happy Menopause podcast, but as it’s the theme for this year’s World Menopause Day, I thought it would be remiss of me not to cover it.

HRT has become a pretty contentious issue in recent years, with a lot of people being very entrenched in the strongly for or strongly against position. And amongst all that there are quite a lot of self-styled experts, who are anything but expert in the matter! 

I’ve been concerned to see the impact this has had on women in...

Aromatherapy is much more complex than just lighting a scented candle. The essential oils of flowers, plants, wood, nuts or seeds can have a powerful effect on the body. In this episode, we explore how aromatherapy might support us in midlife, menopause and beyond. 

My guest is Amy Anthony, a certified aromatherapist and aromatherapy educator who’s an expert in this intricate area. She practices as an aromatherapist in New York City and has taught at the former New York Institute for Aromatherapy and the Centre for Aromatic Studies. 

We talk about the multitude of ways...

Tune into this short message for some VERY exciting news. 

I’m going to introduce you to The Happy Menopause Club, which is where all the cool midlife women hang out! 

There’s loads of great content on there for you that I’ve prepared especially for you and I tell you all about it in this short clip. 

If you can’t wait to find out about it, visit thehappymenopause.com and sign up straight away. I can’t wait to see you there. 

This month in the club:
 
 - A member...

Medicinal herbs have been used for centuries to support our health and wellbeing. In fact, some Chinese and Egyptian texts about the use of herbs date back to 3000BC. In this episode I explore the role of herbs in menopause, and how to introduce them into our self-care programme to manage those pesky symptoms. 

My expert guest is medical herbalist, Hannah Charman. She brings 25 years of clinical experience to the podcast and supports her patients with a combination of herbal medicine, coaching and advanced hypnotherapy. Her specialist area of interest is menopause, and there really isn’t muc...

Premenstrual disorders can make life incredibly miserable. Any woman who’s struggled with PMS will know that, and I covered that specific issue in the closing episode to Season 5. This episode is a follow-on from that, as I drill down into PMDD – premenstrual dysphoric disorder. 

Although it occurs in the 2nd half of the cycle, this isn’t just a severe form of PMS. It’s a hormone-based mood disorder caused by a severe reaction to the natural fluctuations of oestrogen and progesterone which can lead to intense emotional reactions, depression, negativity, brain fog and fatigue, amongst other thi...

September is a good time for new beginnings, so if you’re thinking about how to build up your strength and fitness if you’ve let things slide a bit this summer, this is the episode for you. 

In this episode I chat to the brilliant Cara Metz. She’s an absolute testament to the transformative power of healthy living. A dancer from a very early age, she went on to become the Latin American British Open champion and developed a career as an international dancer, coach and teacher. 

Following her retirement from professional dancing, she deci...

You know when it’s coming don’t you? That time of the month, when people start to tiptoe around you and discretion is definitely the better part of valour amongst your loved ones. Woe betide the fool that dares to suggest you’re a little hormonal – especially if it’s a man! Yep, I’m talking about PMS, premenstrual syndrome, which is the focus of this month’s episode 

PMS can make life miserable, and it can affect different women in different ways, because the symptoms can include irritability, low mood, sheer rage, headaches, bloating, back pain, sore brea...

Do you ever wonder what you came upstairs for, forget where you’ve parked the car or find yourself grappling for the right word that just won’t come? These are all common concerns for women in midlife because brain fog is one of the classic symptoms of perimenopause and menopause.

In my latest Best Bit to celebrate half a million downloads for The Happy Menopause podcast, I’m focusing on brain fog because all that hormonal turmoil plays havoc with the oestrogen receptors in your brain. 

The resulting forgetfulness, poor concentration and focus, plus a gener...

Chronic insomnia can be very stressful – not only are you feeling tired and worried about how you’ll cope the next day, but you’re probably also worrying about all those stories you’ve heard about the potential long-term health impact of not sleeping. And that means that you’re even less likely to get to sleep! 

Women are generally much more prone to sleep disorders than men, and when we reach the perfect storm of midlife, things can get very tricky. In this episode we focus on the potential benefits of sleep loss. 

I chat to auth...

Welcome to my latest Best Bit, part of my series to celebrate half a million downloads for The Happy Menopause podcast, and the chance for you to catch up on some of the brilliant episodes you may have missed. This edition focuses on vaginal dryness, which is rather the Cinderella of the menopause. 

In recent years, we’ve become more confident about discussing our menopause – some women will mention their hot flushes without turning a hair, and the common mental health symptoms  such as anxiety and mood swings have also started to come out of the closet, which...

Are you ready for an adventure? Midlife is a time when we can get itchy feet and want to explore new horizons, but sometimes niggling doubts and a lack of confidence can get in the way of that. So in this episode, I’m chatting to adventurer Alice Morrison, who’s just the woman we need to give us the encouragement to take that first big step. 

Alice is an adventurer, TV presenter and author, who’s currently living in a little village in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. I met her at The Travel Show earlier this ye...

Welcome to my latest Best Bit, part of my series to celebrate half a million downloads for The Happy Menopause podcast and the chance for you to catch up on some of the brilliant episodes you may have missed.

This edition focuses on anxiety, which is one of the most underestimated and unexpected symptoms of the menopause, and yet it’s so common. So many of the women in my nutrition clinic struggle with anxiety during the menopause and it often takes them by surprise.  This is why I called upon Rachel Weiss, accredited counsellor and founder of...

Our relationship with food can be complex and it’s very often determined by a whole host of different experiences. Some of us might describe ourselves as emotional eaters and find that this can get in the way of a healthy lifestyle, affecting our weight and our body image. The whole arena can be a bit of a minefield. In fact, it’s a specialist field in clinical work, so I’ve reached out to an expert in this area, Dr Romi Ran. 
 
 Romi is a Clinical Psychologist; Coach and Author who specialises in food, eating, and body imag...

Welcome to my latest Best Bit, part of my series to celebrate half a million downloads for The Happy Menopause podcast and to give you the chance to catch up on some of the brilliant episodes you may have missed. 

We’re looking back at the launch episode for Season 2 for this edition and we’re talking hair! My guest is consultant dermatologist and hair specialist Dr Sharon Wong, who is incredibly generous with her advice. 

Dr Sharon Wong specialises in treating hair and scalp disorders and she’s an absolute mine of information, as we find...

Are you a sloucher? Do you spend too much time pinned to your desk? Have you started to get a few niggles in your lower back, neck or shoulders? If it’s yes to all of the above, this episode is the one for you, because it’s all about posture, movement and alignment and it’s packed with practical advice to help with all those lurking issues you may have been ignoring or simply putting up with. 

My guest is Kerrie-Anne Bradley, former economist turned expert pilates teacher. It was her own experience of too much time at...

Welcome to another of my Best Bits to celebrate the amazing milestone of 500,000 downloads for The Happy Menopause podcast. 

This time, I’m diving right back into the archive to Season 1 for this one, because my chat about sleep with Professor Russell Foster was absolutely fascinating, and even in this pared-down version, there is a wealth of excellent advice. 

Russell is the Founder and Director of The Sleep and Circadian Research Institute and Head of Oxford University’s Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology. He’s carried out decades of research into the science of circadian rhythms and slee...

This is the first of a series of Best Bits to celebrate the amazing milestone of 500,000 downloads. Huge thanks to all of you for making this possible by listening!

Looking back over the past 5 seasons, there are so many great moments of advice, insight and inspiration from my brilliant guests that it’s hard to choose, but I’ve decided to start with some fascinating extracts from my interview with Dr Catherine Walter. 

Catherine is an Emeritus Fellow in Applied Linguistics at Oxford University, but she’s also a world-record-holding powerlifter, who took up the sport a...

In this episode, we talk about vaginas, vulvas, sex and sex toys, because we can! As young people we all tend to assume that older people don’t have sex, but we midlife women know better, don’t we? It may be more complicated for us, for a variety of reasons, but women in mid and later life are still sexual beings and we have every right to enjoy our intimate life just as much as we did when we were younger. 

But we all know that there can be obstacles to this, such as dryness, pain, recur...

It’s that time of year when a fresh start seems very appealing so you’ve probably already started thinking about changes you might want to make to your life. I’m not a big fan of the radical detox, because it’s not sustainable and your body won’t really enjoy it or benefit from it in the longterm. On the other hand, simple and consistent changes can make a world of difference to your health and wellbeing and my guest for this episode is just the woman we need to help us create a beautiful midlife for ourselves...

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas isn’t it? Of course, that’s not always a good thing if you’re the one organising it and feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point. But even if you absolutely love Christmas (and I have to confess that I do!), there can be a slight sense of dread about the impact it can have on your health and wellbeing, and especially your waistline, with all those extra goodies and social events going on. 

So I’ve decided to have a bit of fun with a Christmas special epi...

Blood sugar balance seems to be very much in vogue at the moment, so I’ve decided to dedicate this episode to talking through it, because I think there’s quite a lot of confusion around it. 

As a nutritionist, I really believe it’s one of the key pillars to managing menopause symptoms and Nutrition 101 if you want to apply a dietary approach to your health and wellbeing during the menopause. 

But it’s important not to overcomplicate things – if you get the basics of your macronutrients right, everything else will pretty much fall into place a...

Do you ever feel invisible? Perhaps you struggle to get your voice heard. If so, you’re not alone, because this is something that most women have experienced at some point, especially as we move into midlife and menopause. But it’s not something we should put up with, because it’s not right and because, let’s face it, middle aged men don’t experience the same problem, do they? 

I’ve invited Dr Vanessa Collingridge to join me for this episode. I first met her at the Menopause Festival in Edinburgh, where were both speaking and I was int...

On World Menopause day it seems very fitting to look at the menopause from a historical angle and link it to women’s experience today. It hasn’t been an easy ride for middle-aged women over the centuries.  We’ve proven to be quite a mystery to the medical community, which has led to some unusual, hilarious and often very distressing assumptions about what’s going on with the female body. 

To help us unravel all this, I’m joined by oral historian Dr Helen Foster of the East Midlands Oral History Archive at the University of Leicester. A...

The theme for this year’s World Menopause Day is cardiovascular disease. You may wonder what that’s got to do with the menopause, so here’s the thing: once you come through the menopause, your body will adjust to the new hormonal version of you and for the most part your symptoms will settle down, just like they did after puberty. But there are one or two key areas that you need to continue to focus on in the long-term – bone health is one, as I’m sure you’re aware. Heart health is another, which is why we’re shinin...

We all know that cooking with fresh ingredients can make a huge difference to our health and wellbeing, but that can be easier said than done when you’re juggling the demands of a busy life. And if you’re not especially confident in the kitchen, it can seem very daunting to start cooking from scratch if you’re worn out after a busy day. But help is at hand in today’s episode, as I’m joined by the brilliant chef Fiona Staunton who’s made it her mission to make cooking good food uncomplicated, quick and easy. 

Fiona is...

To kick off Season 5, we’re looking at the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) of the perimenopause and menopause. Because let’s face it, we’ve all got questions and there are some subjects that you might not feel too comfortable asking about. But fear no more!  I’m chatting to the brilliant Julie Robinson, founder of Meno Health and Move It, Or Lose It, who’s helped thousands of women over the years. Her new book has collated some of the most common (and some not so common!) questions and concerns and she’s worked with a number of experts to pr...

I’ve always thought that magnesium is every menopausal woman’s best friend. It’s a magnificent mineral and a mega multitasker. So it really does deserve a whole episode of The Happy Menopause! I’ve invited magnesium expert Andrew Thomas to talk us through everything you need to know about this marvellous mineral. 

Andrew is the founder of Better You, which is one of my favourite supplement companies. He founded the business in 2006, and it was the first company in the world to commercialise transdermal magnesium therapy and to develop the delivery of nutrients via an oral spra...

Have you ever tried reflexology? It’s way more than just a fancy foot massage! In fact, it’s been used for thousands of years as a therapeutic practice to support health and wellbeing. I’m a fairly recent convert to the wonders of reflexology and I know it makes a huge difference to me. So to find out more and to understand the research behind it, I’ve called on the help of expert reflexologist and teacher, Sally Earlam to share her wisdom with us. 

She has a background in nursing and has been a reflexologist for 24 ye...