Fearne Cotton

She's the founder of the Newson Health Menopause Clinics and Balance Menopause app and her latest book The Power of Hormones is an absolutely vital read because there's so much in there

that gives women the understanding of our own bodies that's been withheld for far too long.

This chat could have gone on for weeks, but we managed to really crack on and condense it into a listenable amount of time.

And we cover subjects like the power of believing in women's experiences of their bodies.

So basically going to the GP and properly being listened to.

We also look at understanding the history of the pill.

Maybe if you were, again, a similar age to me, back in the day, like in the 90s, the early noughties, you popped that contraceptive pill without giving it a thought as to what was in it, what the side effects might be.

We talk about what hormones do in the body and the brain, the perimenopause symptoms to look out for, and debunking the fear around taking hormone replacement therapy.

That, for me...

is the big part of this conversation because that's been the bit that has been keeping my head buried in the sand so I really needed to ask all the questions like just to give you a bit of behind the scenes I do a lot of research for these conversations I read books I read news articles I watch YouTube clips I listen to podcast episodes I did all of that with this one but when I got to sit in front of Louise I basically freestyled and just asked her all the questions that I have previously felt

I mean, too embarrassed to ask anybody like what happens when you go to the doctor to talk about menopause symptoms like that basic.

So if you're with me on that, this is the chat for you.

Right.

Here we go.

This is the show.

Louise, I'm so thrilled to have you on the podcast.

I'm very excited to be here in this lovely, lovely, I'm going to sit here all day and stroke your chairs.

They're lovely.

I wanted tactile chairs just to, I like to fiddle with, you know, textures and a pen and Miss Fidget.

So I thought, yeah, these chairs are quite nice and comforting.