Dr. Louise Newson

I'm talking about, you know, how these hormones work in our body and our brain and the confusion and the history, because I love history.

And I think when you know the history of the medicines, it builds up a bigger picture.

And I've also written a lot about the medicines that women are often medicalised with.

So, you know, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines.

I've written a lot about how they were developed and what they do and don't do for women.

So it's a lot of information.

It's very, very heavily referenced because, again, it's very important that people know this isn't an opinion piece.

I feel...

my work more and more is becoming I'm just a storyteller really I'm very privileged I have a lot of academic knowledge and I have a huge wealth of clinical experience and combining those together all I'm doing is allowing people to have knowledge which hasn't really been available in an accessible way before and then people can make the decisions themselves.

Well, there is.

And I feel very embarrassed as a physician myself that for many years, I thought I was prescribing hormones to women because the contraceptives are labeled as hormones.

And of course, they're not.

They're chemicals that have been synthetically altered.

So they're not the same.

And so also there's a lot in the book I've written about just language of diagnoses for women.

And I actually, as you know, don't like the term menopause or perimenopause because it's not helpful.

It's just saying you're not having periods anymore.

It's a bit like, you know, if you have a headache, have you got a knife in your head or have you got a migraine?

The two are very different and will be treated differently.

And the same with not having periods.