Let’s be real, mama. When it comes to perimenopause and menopause, the information (or lack of it) can feel like a confusing mess. One minute, you’re cruising along in life, and the next, your body is doing things you never expected. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

In this episode, Dr. Renee White is joined by Dr. Shauna Watts, a GP, business owner, mum of four, and a passionate advocate for women's health, especially when it comes to hormones, menopause, and feeling empowered in your body. Shauna is also the host of All About You with Dr. Shauna Watts and a sought-after keynote speaker, helping women navigate midlife with confidence.

Shauna’s own experience of surgical menopause at 33 gives her a unique and deeply personal perspective on this topic. In this episode, she’s breaking down the science, debunking myths, and answering the burning questions sent in by YOU, our listeners.

You’ll hear about:

✔️ What’s actually happening in perimenopause and menopause and why it’s not just about estrogen

✔️ The real role of testosterone and progesterone and why they matter just as much

✔️ Why so many women feel dismissed when they seek help and how to advocate for yourself

✔️ The latest research on gut health and weight gain in menopause and what we know so far

✔️ Common symptoms like brain fog, sleep issues, and anxiety and how to start feeling like YOU again

If you’ve ever felt lost, dismissed, or just plain exhausted trying to understand what’s going on with your body, this episode is a must-listen. Knowledge is power, mama, and you deserve to have the information and support to make informed choices about your health.

Resources and Links:

📲 Want to chat more about this? Connect with Renee on Instagram: @fillyourcup_

🌐 Want to learn more about Dr Renee White and explore Fill Your Cup Doula services

🍪If you want to gobble up our famous Chocolate + Goji lactation cookies, look no further!

📲 Want to connect with Dr. Shauna Watts?

• Follow her on Instagram: @drshaunawatts
• Check out her clinic: You by Dr. Shauna Watts
• Listen to her podcast: All About You with Dr. Shauna Watts on your preferred platform
• Learn more about her upcoming retreat: She Thrives Retreat

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Because when we talk about these things openly, we empower ourselves and each other. 💛

Disclaimer: The information on this podcast presented by the Fill Your Cup is not a substitute for independent professional advice.

Nothing contained in this podcast is intended to be used as medical advice and it is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, nor should it be used for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for your own health professional's advice.

I'm Dr Renee White and this is The Science of Motherhood. Hello and welcome to episode 166 of The Science of Motherhood, I am your host, Dr. Renee White. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is episode three of our miniseries on perimenopause slash menopause and it's our final episode in the miniseries.

So I just wanted to say a big shout out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I also wanted to do a little happy dance celebration. It is four years almost to the day that we aired our very first episode on this podcast. So I'm gonna, I'm just going to give myself a clap. Four years of just smashing out episodes.

He has been with us for quite some time. So thank you, thank you, thank you Jono, you do an excellent job. Especially when I stuff up and I use the wrong, um, microphone, not my professional one. Or sometimes I don't click the right button and it goes through my laptop. So, um, he weaves his magic and does the best he can to fix those things.

Nevertheless, we've had some amazing guests on this podcast, the likes of, you know, Eve Rodsky, who is a New York Times bestseller. We've had people like Dr. Greer Kirshenbaum, who is a world renowned neuroscientist. [00:04:00] We have had Lily Nichols, who is literally the queen of pregnancy and postpartum nutrition.

I also want to give a shout out to the people who, uh, turn up on the regular, the people who, um, have been on our podcast many, many times, Dr. Stephanie Pirotta, who is the guru of endometriosis and PCOS and nutrition when it comes to those types of things. We also have the amazing Dr. Cheryl Phua, who's been part of this Menopause, Perimenopause mini series.

I get to share it with you. So thank you for joining us for the past four years. I hope we have another four years, at least, in the tank to go. But who knows what this podcast will evolve into. Who knows, who knows, who knows. Um, I started this in my bedroom with a laptop and like a $60 microphone and on Zoom.

So, thank you everyone for listening in for the past four years. All right, let's dive into today's episode. As I said, it is number three in our perimenopause menopause little mini series that I've been doing. And we have got a fantastic guest. Her name is Dr. Shauna Watts. She's a family doctor. She's a business owner, but she has got a really special interest in menopause and aesthetic medicine.

Um, she's also a mum of four, um, she's a keynote speaker. She's the host of her Australian medical podcast, All About You with Dr. Shauna Watts and you will be able to tell from her accent pretty quickly. She is from Northern Ireland and she immigrated from there to Australia about a decade ago. She's got over 20 years of experience in medicine.

And so she takes a really holistic approach, which I love. You will hear this time and time again. Over the past four years, I am all about people who take a holistic approach to health because we are not, um, you know, as a human being, it's like, you know, doing an experiment in a test tube. Yes, it might work in a test tube, but once you put it into a human or some other kind of really complex network and function, there's other things at play guys.

Oh my god, this woman is absolutely amazing. So in today's podcast we are looking at what perimenopause is, what menopause is, how are they different, some really interesting ongoing and new research in the area when it comes to these two topics. And then I just unleash huge rapid fire on Dr. Shauna Watts.

Dr Shauna Watts: I am good. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really delighted to be here.

Dr Shauna Watts: Thank you so much. That's really kind. I appreciate that very much. I do think that storytelling is something that's obviously been done forever and it's just such a great medium to help people understand.

Dr Renee White: Yeah, absolutely. And I think particularly in the area that we're going to be talking about today, which is perimenopause menopause.

Sorry, but we are complicated human beings. That's just how we are. So obviously, first of all, for all those people out there who haven't heard about you, can you please just give a little brief introduction to the listeners about who you are and a little bit about your story. as you found yourself in this field?

Dr Shauna Watts: Okay, so obviously people probably listening are trying to work out what the accent is. So I currently live in Australia and I've lived here for 11 years and I moved to Australia with my husband who's also a doctor and our four children but I was born in Northern Ireland and grew up and spent most of my life living just outside Belfast and I did a little bit of a meandering journey went to medical school, 18 came out as a doctor at 23, but then had a little bit of a journey.

I always wanted to know did that patient manage to get to her son's graduation or how did the wedding go? I always wanted to know all that stuff. So, I find myself swapping and becoming a general practitioner, which I've worked both in the UK system and the Australian system. And I suppose being a female GP, you do end up seeing a lot of women and a lot of children and I've always thrived on that.

And I think it really began to resonate and those women were often talking to me, so while they'd be talking to me about their rosacea or their adult acne or their wrinkles or their, the fact that they were aging, they would also start talking to me about the fact that they couldn't sleep or that their weight was just going up but nothing had changed.

Or how can I lose weight or whatever? And I began to think I'm having this conversation over here and this conversation over here, but the both are overlapping all the time. And I began to realise that I just couldn't actually separate the two. And so I wanted to have this quite holistic clinic where women could come and see me and we could talk about everything from perimenopausal weight gain to not sleeping to, you know, pain, having sex to weight gain to how they were losing confidence in their appearance.

I had a surgical menopause with my fourth child, and it was, so I went from pregnant and within half an hour in the cesarean section, I had my ovaries removed and I was menopausal. And so I didn't actually have that perimenopausal journey. I just went from high to low and that had its own issues and to be honest, they're probably mostly things that I've, I've kept to myself for a very long time and I was navigating lots of health issues. But of course, like everyone, you kind of think, Oh, well, I'm really tired and I'm not sleeping, but you know, I do have four children or, you know, I've put on weight and I can't get this weight off and I've never been someone that my whole life with all my other three children.

And it's only really looking through that retrospective scope that I go, wow, gosh, you did yourself such a disservice because I really didn't actually go and seek a lot of help and I think I did occasionally bring things up to various specialists, but I kind of was just told, you know, Oh, well, you know, just try this or just try that.

And I think for me, if you're having a tricky perimenopause or postmenopause, it can be very lonely because it can often be symptoms that people don't necessarily feel really comfortable sharing. It can feel very private, very intimate, and also. If you're someone who maybe your group of friends are not at the same stage as you, then that's also really, really tricky because people don't understand what you're going through.

The things that I used to, I used to be a very sociable person, but now I'm avoiding everything. I used to be someone who, you know, could do X. I used to be able to drive to the city and it didn't worry me. Now I'm terrified of being in the car. I used to be someone who was very confident at work, but now I'm shaking like a leaf and I can't remember what I'm meant to be saying next.

Dr Renee White: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the conversations that I've had since attending the workshop here in Hobart, you know, I've spoken to a variety of demographics, people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s about this exact issue around you know, and it's funny because once I start talking about it people kind of creep out from the woodwork and they're like, oh really what was that and what did they say about this and oh yeah and I'll talk about the fact that essentially knowledge is power and when we have that knowledge we can make informed decisions and also the conversation around normalising this phenomenon that we go through because I've had discussions with people and they've been dismissed.

All right. I want to set the scene. I'm all about definitions because I love that as a scientist so can we just distinguish the difference between perimenopause and menopause.

Dr Shauna Watts: Okay. So this is probably going to shock some people, but the menopause is one day in your life, and that is one day exactly 12 months after your last menstrual period.

Now, like you, as a scientist, I love a good definition. Yeah. This is a terrible one because the reality is it doesn't really take into consideration people like me who had our ovaries removed. So not having periods or people who've had a hysterectomy who are not having periods. Like, so when's their menopause?

It's the definition we've got, but that's base of it. So menopause is one day and in theory you are in the post menopause every day after that for the rest of your life. And that's sort of a hormonal state that you're in. The perimenopause is really a variable period of time when usually we see periods change.

I was having to leave work, I was flooding my clothes. My iron was so low, I had to keep having iron infusions. And then you could have their best friend or their sister saying, Oh, well, mine was the opposite, mine got really short and really light and I literally only had to wear a little liner. I hardly even knew it was coming.

And so, and everything in between. And then also in that perimenopausal period, although the down, uh, the trajectory of hormone levels are from sort of, up here to down here, really, you know, it's not just you don't just do the slow and steady gradual reduction in hormone levels. I would say to patients it is a bit like a roller coaster.

And I think that's the best way to describe it. It is literally a roller coaster and it's probably that roller coaster that makes it such a challenge because you could take someone's blood on Monday morning, and their levels are here, but you could probably take their blood on Wednesday afternoon, and it could be up here.

So I think those are how I understand the definitions. Pre menopause, you're pre menopausal basically from puberty until, um, you get to the menopause. So there's pre, peri, post and menopause. Um, but you know, they all get interchanged. And so we'll, people will often talk about being menopausal or being [00:25:00] perimenopausal or being postmenopausal, but I always think probably don't get too bogged on by the names.

most of the time, you know, we get the gist of what you're meaning.

Dr Renee White: Thank you for clarifying that. And yes, it's not as black and white as what we, I think, assume in the mainstream media and things like that. One of the things that really enlightened me at the workshop was that we hear a lot about oestrogen and oestrogen, oestrogen, oestrogen, because there's oestrogen gels, but something that you touched on was it's not just oestrogen that we need to be monitoring.

There's two other hormones, progesterone and testosterone as well. Can you just kind of expand on that? Cause I found that fascinating.

But the second issue is that there is a small risk of, um, making you have more chance of having endometrial cancer, so that's a cancer of the lining of the uterus. Now you can have developed endometrial cancer anyway, but we know that if you have what's called unopposed oestrogen, i. e. you don't have progesterone kind of counteracting it, then that does increase your risk.

And that used to be the only reason that we gave progesterone, and if someone had had a hysterectomy, et cetera, we just didn't give them progesterone at all. And that's still the case. You definitely don't need to have progesterone. I think what's going to be really interesting with time is that I think we're realising that these hormones do a lot more than we had originally thought they did.

Now don't get me wrong, oestrogen and estradiol also seem to help sleep. But I think in medical terms, we've probably oversimplified these hormones a lot, you know, it's always been, oh yes, oestrogen, it's all about the hot flushes.

Dr Renee White: Yeah.

Dr Shauna Watts: And progesterone, oh, you just need that for uterine protection. But I think the reality is that more and more, we're realising that these hormones have receptors and all sorts of organs in our body on muscle on bone.

And, and that's just something to discuss with your doctor. The other one that people seem to be really surprised about is testosterone and lots of people. Unfortunately, think of testosterone as being a male hormone and for years, unfortunately, all of these hormones have been called sex hormones. And so in our mind, we've thought of all these hormones, Oh, when you get to puberty, you know, Oh, females, they get a real spike in oestrogen and they grow breasts and all the things.

Well, her partner has more estrogen in his body than she does. Okay. Men have estrogen. And conversely, if you look at a young, let's say 27 year old female, when she's at that age, she has probably about four times as much active testosterone in her body than she does oestrogen. So testosterone is a very important hormone for both sexes.

And what we know as well is that testosterone, like I think we all know, like people will sort of know sort of like, Oh yeah. Such and such. He's a bit aggressive or he's a very angry guy. Right. And he's got a bit too much testosterone. Testosterone, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we kind of all know that testosterone clearly has impacts in the brain.

So sometimes women are very taken aback to know that actually testosterone is really important for them. We know that testosterone actually begins to reduce well before the perimenopause actually. It's dropping off really from the thirties. But for example, if you have a woman who has her ovaries removed.

And everyone often thinks about, Oh, gosh, do we need to give you replace your oestrogen? But often people forget is that they've just taken away 50 percent of that woman's testosterone. We know, unfortunately, again, most of the research is done in men, but if you look at men who've got very, very low testosterone, they will barely be able to get out of bed.

Now, in Australia, we're really lucky because we've got a female dosing uh, cream that basically is testosterone and it's in the female dose because there's no doubt the dose that women need is significantly lower than what you would need for a man. So we're really lucky we're actually the only country in the world comes a little white and pink tube and apparently it's imported Um privately by people all over the world, but we're the only country that has it but it has a license only for libido And so what that means is that, strictly speaking, you're only meant to be prescribed that by licensing, [00:32:00] um, if you've got a low libido and you're not meant to be prescribed it for anything else.

The jury is on it. I always say to people, look, the reality is, again, we know that libido is very much a brain symptom. Do we really think that the only thing testosterone does in our brain is to give us sexual libido.

Dr Renee White: It's so, it, it's, it just screams like male masculinity, like, oh, it's the only thing that this can do. It has to be done with, like, it has to be with sex. It's like, what are you joking me?

Dr Shauna Watts: It's very frustrating. So I definitely have patients who will tell me that, yes, it, it, it does improve their libido for sex, but actually they, I think Louise Newsom describes it as libido for life. So zest for life. People will say they've got their zest for life.

And I think that's probably one of my frustrations is that I just was at the International Menopause Society, uh, conference and it was fabulous, but it was definitely lots of, Oh, but we need to wait to have X, Y, and Z randomised control trials and anyone in the scientific community knows one, they're really hard to do, two they're really expensive to do and three, they take a very, very long time. And so, really, are we so we can only do these things once we have all these randomised control trials. And this is just my personal opinion, but it seems like the bar is set very, very high for anything to do with women and hormones.

So I do feel a little frustrated that sometimes we're so busy chasing these studies that you know, no one seems to be doing, which means we're never going to get the result, which means we're never going to be allowed to do the thing. And yet when you talk to doctors like me and you know, I'm in a group of lots of doctors who work in this space and you know, we know what we see and we know that.

It's not something that you're going to know is going to work in, you know, 10 days. But yeah, so I think people are always surprised a bit that testosterone is relevant in this space and I think you know lots of doctors are really scared of it Yeah And I think lots of patients can be really scared of it But other patients have really educated themselves and will often come up specifically asking for it but I do think I would like to say is that [00:36:00] it does need to be prescribed by someone who does have experience and who also is going to monitor you because I think that's really important.

So it's one of the hormones that, you know, we do want to check and see what levels are. And that's something that I check on a long term basis as well. So, you know, at least every six months I'm checking it and making sure I know what the level is because we don't want you to go too high.

Dr Renee White: Yeah, it's definitely not one of those things where you go set and forget, you know, like you want to be checking back in and making sure and as you say, you know, that's, that's the opportunity where you come back and go, okay, well, let's read the blood test because now we're actually got some things into play. Um, you mentioned the, um, conference, the, is it the World Symposium?

Dr Shauna Watts: Yeah, sorry, yeah, so it was the World Symposium.

It's, it's a work in progress, but in terms of perimenopause and menopause, what is it that we know about the gut microbiome?

Dr Shauna Watts: Well, certainly it would seem based on some of the, there's a lot of really good research actually coming out of the UK. I really enjoy. There's a really good podcast called Zoey and they're very helpful and they present a lot of nutritional, uh, information.

And what they are trying to really understand and pinpoint is, is that one of the causes of the weight gain that people see? Because the reality is that, that is a big issue for so many women. I mean, I would have to say, although everyone always thinks of menopause and hot flashes, hot flashes are not the main complaint that I see.

I see lots of different, but I would say sleep and weight gain are two in the top three, definitely of things that people are upset about. Not only weight gain, but real change in body shape. So people really complaining about getting this abdominal obesity that they've never had before. And there's no doubt that some people will put on weight.

It's called subcutaneous fat and we all have it, you know, on our faces and you have it really all over your body. But what sort of shifts it would seem is that we now start to lay down this stuff called visceral fat, which wraps its way around your organs. And we know that it is quite different. It doesn't behave the same way as the fat under the skin.

And they took some of the gut microbiome, um, of, of patients and the mice were a normal weight and they didn't change their, their access to food, but just by putting some of the gut microbiome of people who were obese into these mice within six weeks, then the mice were obese. Yeah. Nothing could change in their food and I find that so interesting and it's obviously can't say that we're exactly the same as mice.

Clearly we're not, but that's how research tends to start, but I think it makes us really begin to question some of the things that we've always thought about. Um, weight gain and, you know, perhaps we have lived in a bit of a blame culture, um, whenever in reality, you know, it's clearly much more complex. So sorry, that's a very long winded way of saying, I know there's,

Dr Shauna Watts: We know there's a shift in the microbiome at this stage. You know, the jury is out. There's definitely lots. of groups around the world really actively researching this to try and understand why that is. And I think what I take away from it at this point from my patients is, and anyone listening is, it really is now this time of your life, particularly if you've never done it before, this is the time to say, okay.

Unfortunately, at this point, my body is kind of working a little bit against me. So I am actually going to have to really try and ditch the ultra processed food. I'm really going to have to eat the rainbow. I'm going to have to bump my fiber up like never before. I'm going to have to not have broccoli as my vegetable every night.

I'm going to have to have more variety because we know that doing those things is much more helpful. I'm going to shift that microbiome. It would seem back more in the better direction.

Dr Renee White: Yeah.

Dr Renee White: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Just as a side note, my husband, he has gut issues and I, um, for Christmas a couple of years ago, I got him one of those, um, microbiome tests that like, you know, you poop in the thing and send it off.

Oh my God. Like 70 page report comes back. It was like heaven for me as a scientist. Um, so that's how obsessed I am about it. Shauna, we are going to go through a little bit of a rapid fire because I, um, sent a little message out to our listeners and audience on, um, Instagram. So if you were happy to indulge me in some of these questions, um, That would be great, because these, I think these are like some burning questions that lots of people have.

Dr Shauna Watts: I think there's two things. To be honest, when I see patients, I do send them for blood tests, but I'm sending them for blood tests because I want to know, are they iron deficient?

Because they've got rotten periods or, you know, we can see vitamin D deficiency. We see cholesterol bouncing up. We often see, unfortunately, women self medicating with alcohol. So, I want to check their liver function because lots of women can't sleep or they're feeling really anxious, so they're drinking more.

And so, I'm wanting to make sure that I'm not attributing things that actually are related to something else. I want to know, is their thyroid okay? I want to know if they are insulin resistant. Are they pre diabetic? So, I think it is a good thing to have blood tests. To be honest, I do check hormone levels.

They'll still be within what's considered a non postmenopausal range. And I still think that it is good medicine to make sure that someone isn't sitting with, you know, because perhaps their palpitations are coming from an overactive thyroid and not because they're perimenopausal. So I think it is good medicine to have a blood test, but yes, your, your, um, listener is completely right.

It does seem a bit crazy that we're doing it, but it is the right thing to do.

Dr Renee White: Yeah. Okay. So you want a clean slate before you like, you know, you've got to have all the facts in front of you and then to make the diagnosis.

Dr Shauna Watts: Yeah, because we don't want to flip the other way where for years we've ignored the perimenopause and brushed it all away.

Dr Renee White: Okay, great. Thank you for that. Um, another question. Can you take your MHT separately, i. e. gel in the morning and your Prometrium at night?

Dr Shauna Watts: Absolutely. 100%. You do it whenever it suits you. So if I always say to my patients about their gel, do it whenever you've got the time and patience to let it dry and I encourage my patients to have their Prometrium in the evening, because as I said, for some people, it can have a little bit of a sedative effect and help them sleep. So I'm really happy. I personally do split mine as well. So yeah, absolutely fine to do so.

Dr Shauna Watts: So, um, the way I encourage my patients to do it, and you will forgive me, but I actually don't use my hand to do my gel, so I actually pump my gel onto my wrist, and then I rub it with both arms like this, and I spread it all over.

And the reason that I do that is, as a doctor, I'm just washing my hands every 15 or 20 minutes between patients. And I kind of feel like there's no way this is all absorbed in 15 minutes. Like it takes a while to absorb in and I don't want to lose my dose. So I, I know it looks a bit weird, but I actually use my other arm to do it.

Dr Renee White: Okay, um, next question and I think I asked this to all of you at the M Chat, um, what is better, um, the question is what is better body identical estradiol gel or patch. So what is the difference between the gel and patch?

Are they the same or not?

Dr Shauna Watts: So, so basically you can get estradiol in a patch and in a gel. Obviously there are some other synthetic older ones that we don't use as much. Um, look, they're, they're very similar. Um, in ways a patch is easier because of course you, you slap it on and then you forget about it for three and a half days until you have to change it again. We've got a couple of issues in Australia. One, there's a worldwide shortage. We're very far away. We're a very small market and therefore, you know, we just seem to get them in really dribs and drabs. And I find it really frustrating for patients.

So we know we've got a big supply because it's an Australian company that make EstroGel. So, but I think they're both as good as each other. I think the advantages of a patch is you don't have to remember every day. The disadvantages, are you going to remember every three and a half days to change it?

Dr Renee White: Yeah.

So I would say that for some women that can be a challenge, but they're both really good options. It's really just that availability. That's the issue right now.

Dr Renee White: How big are the patches?

Dr Shauna Watts: So they really, so there's ones that are really quite small.

Dr Renee White: So like 20 cent piece or?

Dr Shauna Watts: Dot, yeah. And they tend to have the word dot on them. And then there's other ones that are much bigger. At the minute it's very hard to get the dot patches. Gotcha. But it is a worldwide issue and I think, look, the reality I think is that we've had this complete awakening of people in the last maybe three years where people are like suddenly really interested, motivated and I don't know, I think the collision has been in my mind.

I don't know that they saw it coming and they just haven't really have the infrastructure to meet the demand at this stage.

Dr Shauna Watts: I think there's another group of women as well, though. I, I do feel sad for as well. And that's the group of women who over the last 20 years, you know, really were denied hormone therapy.

You know, there are a group of women who are maybe nigh in their. Early seventies, uh, or late sixties, you know, they, they kind of missed out and, and they were probably a generation where there, there was not the same amount of information. They would have been shut down by a lot of doctors, including myself.

I'm not gonna, I'm not sitting here saying I've been perfect about this. We were literally told 21, 22 years ago when I worked in the UK. All the patients have to come off hormone replacement therapy anyone that you see who comes in, no more repeat prescriptions get, you know, everyone was brought in and stopped over.

So I do feel sorry for those women because I think it was a generation where things often weren't talked about as much as they are today. And I just think of all those women who have suffered. It's awful to think.

Dr Renee White: Yeah, absolutely. Oh my goodness. Um, another question, when do you start to worry about brain fog?

Dr Shauna Watts: Okay, so

Dr Renee White: Is there, is there like a line in the sand?

Dr Renee White: When is it, when is it, oh, I'm, like, you know, we've touched on it many times, like, you've probably got a stressful job, and you've got kids, and you've got a house, and blah, blah, blah, and all those things, and then there's the forgetfulness. Yeah, when does it become a point where you're like, actually this is something I probably need to look into?

Dr Shauna Watts: Yeah, look, I think the reality is there's no doubt there's many women come in and they're absolutely convinced they've got early onset dementia or I even have patients who are convinced they must have a brain tumor.

Dr Renee White: I spoke to someone yesterday about that, she was convinced.

Dr Shauna Watts: Yeah, I've even had patients convince me that they've got a brain tumor, to be honest. So we've gone off and had an MRI scan and things. Um, and look, sometimes that's what needs to be done. But I think the reality is that, you know, it's coming and having a conversation, hopefully with a health professional who can say to you, actually that, that is finding a little bit concerning.

And I don't know if you've seen recently, they, they, they did show some pet scans of [00:55:00] people's brains when they were actually having a hot flush and what is actually happening within the brain.

Dr Renee White: I haven't seen those ones

Dr Shauna Watts: Yeah, it's completely amazing and it literally is something very active happening in the brain. And so you kind of have to think to yourself, well, no wonder your brain's not working properly if all that's going on. So I think the bottom line for me would be that the vast majority of people don't actually have to worry about a sinister diagnosis, the brain fog is definitely real and it's incredibly common.

People don't feel as sharp as they did. But I think all that being said, I always like to say, but that doesn't mean I'm dismissing you. Go and talk to someone if you're really worried, or if you have a significant family history of people in your family with neurological conditions or early onset dementia and things like that, of course you need to go and have the conversation.

Uh, Gotu Kola, Damiana, Black Cohosh, Valerian, Skullcap, Oatseed, Ginger, my friend sent it to me and she said, because I'm the science nerd in the group, have you heard of this? Do you know what this is? And it's kind of tag, it's, uh, it's a, it's a menopause patch. It's being like kind of pitched as, and my response was. Oh, well, I'm chatting with Shauna next week. I'll ask her. Have you heard about these?

So that's it. Yeah. So black cohosh and red clover are some of the naturopathic things that they would use for menopausal symptoms. Some people find it helpful, but it hasn't, they haven't really stood up. They actually are. I've had multiple clinical studies which have shown that they don't seem to do much.

So in my mind, why would you buy a probably not inexpensive patch to, and think it's more natural than actually just giving your body back its own hormones? Wouldn't that be the most natural thing to do?

So they don't have all these other little bits and pieces hanging off them that, you know, we do see in kind of other spheres of the pharmaceutical market. It is like one to one copy and paste.

Dr Shauna Watts: They're absolutely identical. And, you know, isn't it interesting again, is that people don't seem to be super worried about, for example, a lot of the contraceptive pills and don't get me wrong, I think contraceptive pills being great and liberating and all the things that it's done for women is wonderful. But the reality is that those are synthetic. A lot of them are synthetic. More recently in the last couple of years, there's a few that have come on the market that are much more identical, but most of them are synthetic.

Dr Renee White: Yeah.

And, you know, if you want to be natural, then you're going to have to, you know, not dye your hair anymore and not wear shoes and not drive a car. Do you know what I mean? Yes, I feel like we have to like really be very careful about what we say is natural and what isn't natural. And you know, childbirth is natural, but we still help people and we give them pain relief.

Dr Renee White: That's okay, everyone. Yeah.

Dr Shauna Watts: And it's kind of a bit weird, isn't it?

Dr Renee White: It is so weird!

Dr Shauna Watts: We say to other people, oh, well, you know, we know that you've got that awful earache, but why don't you just try and suffer on with it for a little while longer? And if it gets absolutely skull splitting, then we'll give you some pain relief.

Dr Renee White: Yeah, you've got to meet, you've got to meet all the thresholds before we're willing to kind of, you know, give you a bit of grace.

Dr Renee White: Nah, hit and miss. I'm mindful of our time, but I, and I think I'm, I'm actually going to be able to integrate one of the, um, listeners questions into our own rapid fire that we always ask our guests. So if you're happy to indulge me on that, um, that would be great. But our first question that we always ask, what is your top tip? Uh, I have it for like, um, pregnant people, but I'm, I always put it into context of like, what's your top tip, I guess, for women who might be experiencing perimenopause or menopause at this minute?

We're going to have high cortisol levels, so it's going to be really hard to lose weight. We're not going to be motivated to go for that walk or go to the gym. We're not going to be motivated to socialise and connect So for me, actually, my top tip would be prioritise sleep and do the things that you can do as well. It's not all going to be just that the hormones perhaps are going to be the miracle.

If you've got a bedroom that, you know, you're crawling over three baskets of laundry and ten piles of paperwork, and your, you know, your sheets are really uncomfortable, and your bedroom's way too hot, and, you know, your curtains let the sun in. And, and, and, and, and, you know, then you're probably not going to have a really good night's sleep.

Dr Renee White: Absolutely. Um, great tip, great tip. I'm a huge advocate for prioritising sleep. Um, so one of the, uh, audience questions was around resources on this topic. What are your favorite kind of books and resources for this one?

Dr Shauna Watts: So there are lots of great books out there. I, the books that I love are I've read recently, again, are Estrogen Matters by Avron Blooming. I think that's a great book both for patients, doctors, nurses, anyone in the medical arena, but also a really interesting one for anyone with a genetic propensity to breast cancer or who's had breast cancer.

A lot of women, not only do they not have any libido, but actually having sex for a lot of women is it's not just about it being a little bit dry. It's downright painful, really uncomfortable, almost impossible and I think a lot of women feel like they just have to potentially end their relationship because They feel like in some way it's not fair to their partner.

It's called the balance app and it's free and it's a really, really good app with lots of information on there and I know that Dr. Louise has invested so much time and energy into that one, and also my podcast, lots of lots and lots of interviews with some really fantastic doctors, psychologists, neuroscientists, all sorts of people on there, dieticians, nutritionists, even dermatologists, dermal clinicians, because of course the reality is that this is something that impacts everything, skin face, body, everything.

Dr Shauna Watts: I love Brene Brown.

Dr Renee White: I know, isn't she fab?

Dr Shauna Watts: Oh, I love her. She's, she's like my, she's on my bucket list of who I can get on my podcast. She's one of my dream guests. Uh, what's on my bedside table? Well, right now, a couple of those books that I've just mentioned are on my bedside table. Um, usually a glass of water, which may be a couple of days old.

I actually also do have my EstroGel and my testosterone on the side of my bed because I'm very busy and occasionally I realise that I've forgotten and so I have them at the side of my bed just in case I haven't, um, put them on. But yeah, that's all that's there. Nothing too exciting.

So thank you so much. For coming on for all the listeners. How can we kind of get in contact with you? Where are your socials? Where is your clinic? All of those things. Oh, and your retreat. That's coming up too.

Jacuzzi pool, beautiful food, fun times, um, just women creating a bit of a community and having that confidence to be able to ask some real experts in the space the questions that they've been dying to ask and even if they don't feel confident enough to ask them out loud, we're going to have a little box and we'll have all your questions.

And then my clinic is called you, Y O U. by Dr. Shauna Watts and that's also got a lot of information on there and you'll find that on Instagram, Facebook, um, LinkedIn, all, all the places. So all the usual places, but I'd love to hear from your listeners. I'd love them to reach out to me and, you know, even if they have some ideas of things that they would like me to talk about or present on, then I'd love to have that feedback.

Dr Renee White: Amazing. Thank you so much. We're going to put all of that in the show notes so people have instant access to all of that. Thank you again, um, for your time.

Dr Shauna Watts: Thank you for having me.

Dr Renee White: And, um, yes, to everyone listening, thank you so much. And please feel free to reach out to Shauna. Until next week, we will see you.

Dr Shauna Watts: Bye.

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