Dr. Louise Newson

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.

You could be pregnant with high hormones in your body or you could have low progesterone or low estradiol, low testosterone or low all three.

So changing our language is really important because a lot of my work now is really extending to younger women.

And these poor women who are misdiagnosed actually often with depression or bipolar, but many people are told they have PCOS or they have PMS or PMDD, more severe form premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

It's just code for they have low hormones.

But we have to be clear which hormone because so many of these women are just given the contraceptive pill.

in good faith by a lot of doctors who think they're hormones, but they're not.

So this is where the understanding, like you say, for healthcare professionals is really important because we've been misguided and we continue to be because, and it's woven through the book a lot, as you know, pharmaceutical companies who make these synthetic hormones have a lot stronger voice than the companies that make the natural body identical hormones.

So if we think what hormones are, hormones are just chemical messengers that are produced by different organs in our body.

They go into the bloodstream and obviously our bloodstream feeds every single cell in our body.

So they go around our circulation and they work on every cell in our body.

And we have hundreds of hormones in our body, probably thousands, you know, many that we don't even know about.

And they all work very closely together.

If you think about insulin and the way it works with our glucose transport and metabolism, we've got hormones such as thyroxine, we've got cortisol, we've got adrenaline, we've got loads of hormones, serotonin, dopamine, glutamate.