Podcast Episode 1: ‘Why I founded the Newson Health Menopause Society’ with Dr Louise Newson
In the first episode of the Newson Health Menopause Society podcast we are introduced to the host, PhD researcher Lauren Redfern, who shares a little of her own background and how she became interested in the perimenopause and menopause. Lauren welcomes her first guest of the podcast, the founder of the society, Dr Louise Newson, to explain why she has launched the society and what she hopes it achieves for women’s health across the world.
Through their conversation, Dr Louise Newson reflects on her recent years specialising in menopause care and how she has helped countless women through providing free evidence-based information on her websites and social media and the balance menopause support app. Louise shares her passion for continually piecing together the menopause jigsaw of knowledge, through research and education and believes the issue must be addressed by multiple healthcare disciplines and through shared decision making with the person going through it. Louise’s hope is that by professionals coming together across the world, through sharing knowledge and connecting the research dots, that Newson Health Menopause Society will change women’s health for good.
For more information about the Newson Health Menopause Society, visit www.nhmenopausesociety.org
Podcast Transcript
Lauren Redfern [00:00:06] Welcome to the podcast for the Newson Health Menopause Society, a multidisciplinary collective of interested professionals passionate about improving hormone health across the world. The society exists to educate and inspire others to raise the standard of menopause care and access to treatment, to facilitate research collaborations across specialities and countries, and to provide expert advice and guidance to our associates. The ultimate aim of the Newson Health Menopause Society is to improve the lives and future health of women and all who experience the perimenopause and menopause. I’m Lauren Redfern. I’m a medical anthropologist, and I’ve been exploring the experiences of those using testosterone as part of their HRT treatment. In this podcast series, I’m going to be talking to guests from a variety of different disciplines in order to share knowledge and ultimately improve our understanding of the perimenopause and menopause.
Lauren Redfern [00:01:02] On each of these podcasts, I’m hoping, where possible, to begin by sharing with you all a story from a patient. Parts of these stories are going to be spoken using a patient’s own words, and they will relate to the theme and topic of the episode I’ll be discussing with a particular guest joining me. Today however, and for this first episode, I thought I’d actually begin with my own story and share with you all some words taken from my research as they relate to the person I’ll be speaking with today, Louise Newson.
Lauren Redfern [00:01:33] If I were to speak to Louise about my research in the months after I’d finished observing in her clinic, our phone calls would usually be scheduled in the early morning before her first patient facing appointment. When pencilling in these times to catch up, I think about the practise of scheduling and phone calls outside of office hours. I’d seen it performed pretty regularly by Louise when observing in the clinic and as an onlooker, I simply drew the conclusion that Louise was inclined to use each minute of her day productively. As a recipient of one of these phone calls, however, I came to a slightly different conclusion. Fundamentally, what I came to realise was that in running a business, being a manager, a mum and ultimately the Menopause Doctor, hours of work for Louise didn’t exactly meet a boundary nine to five. I watched Louise make clinical phone calls with colleagues and co-workers. I watched her find time to provide advice to the people in her life that needed it. I even watch to provide it to those she didn’t know, to the relatives of her administrative assistants, the other mums at her daughter’s school, and of course, to the hundreds of thousands of followers that subscribe to her Instagram platform.
Lauren Redfern [00:02:41] Fundamentally, what I came to realise during my research was that Louise’s advice and support reached out beyond her clinic. It carried across telephone lines, emails and social media posts. It grew legs and walked all over the country. It reached into living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens. It featured on daytime television segments and popular documentaries. Louise’s work, both literally and metaphorically, has pushed boundaries. Just like the hormones she prescribes, it flows through our daily lives. Ultimately, Louise’s work has helped to make the perimenopause and menopause not only accessible and relatable, but importantly, a point of discussion. So those were just a few words taken from my research, and I wanted to share them as a way to introduce our guest for today. The person who has founded the Newson Health Menopause Society, the reason we’re all here. Louise Newson.
Dr Louise Newson [00:03:35] Oh, hi Lauren. I feel very humbled. Yes, I wish I could say that I only work between nine and five.
Lauren Redfern [00:03:44] Well, I have to admit as well. I’m both slightly terrified and very excited to be sitting with you today in the position that you usually take as podcast host.
Dr Louise Newson [00:03:55] I love being a guest, actually. I love my podcast. I must say I was recording one earlier today and I, which confirms what you’re saying is that it’s a Sunday that we’re doing this podcast. I was recording one of mine earlier and I was actually saying to the guest, I really enjoy having time to speak to people because my life is so busy. Actually, to have a bit of time is lovely. But then when I’m a guest, it’s great because I don’t even have to prepare anything. I can just come and enjoy it. So I’m hoping that’s what’s going to happen today.
Lauren Redfern [00:04:25] I enjoy the questions. Yeah. Well, actually, for context of those listening, I met Louise in 2018, which was quite soon after you’d made the decision to open your own clinic. And I came down and persuaded you to let me hang out and observe and talk to women and those working within menopausal health. And I think at the time you had maybe a dozen part time clinicians and in that space now of three years, the transformation is incredible. And I think last time we spoke, it was something along the lines of 70+ clinicians and a waiting list of over 10,000 women. I wanted actually to spend a bit of time really unpacking that because I think it really interestingly demonstrates not only I mean, obviously, how great is it the clinic is doing well, but how worrying the unmet need is when it comes to availability of adequate menopausal care and advice.
Dr Louise Newson [00:05:16] Absolutely, and I had no idea how women were struggling, actually. And as you know, I set up a clinic just on my own and all I wanted to do is do one day a week really. I was working as a GP, working as a medical writer, mum of three children and just wanted to do more menopause work. And I couldn’t get a job in the NHS, not because it wasn’t because I’m bad or anything. It was just because I couldn’t get one. You know, I went to different CCGs and said, ‘Look, could I run a menopause clinic? It’s a lot cheaper to have a GP than a gynaecologist to run a menopause clinic in primary care.’ And they said, ‘No, it’s not needed. We’re looking at diabetes and cardiovascular disease’ and you know, all those things that actually are very important when you think about the menopause. And so my mentor then said to me, ‘Well, you’ll just have to set up privately’, and that made me feel really uncomfortable. I never, ever wanted to do anything but work for the NHS, because why would you? The NHS is so important for healthcare, and I always thought that if you did private medicine, it would be full of very wealthy people who are very demanding. And where I worked as a GP was very working class practise with really, really lovely people. I’ve done a lot of medicine, hospital medicine, especially in Manchester, and I love seeing all sorts of people and I thought, I just don’t want the people who are just going to be white, middle class, wealthy women coming to my practise.
Dr Louise Newson [00:06:41] But I was also very conscious that a lot of my friends were really struggling to get HRT and they were coming out of their GP surgeries with anti-depressants. And I was saying, ‘what on earth that is not a treatment for the perimenopause or menopause? You’re not depressed. Why are you having anti-depressants?’ ‘Oh, my doctor’s told me HRT is too risky. We can’t, you can’t have it.’ So I thought, well I’m going to have to try and just do it maybe one day a week and I will help some of my nearest and dearest friends.
Dr Louise Newson [00:07:11] I hadn’t really thought about it because, as you know, I don’t really have a plan what I do. And because of doing all the medical writing, I wanted to put some evidence-based information for women out there and use the Menopause Doctor website, which, as you know, is now the balance-menopause website. But because I suppose I started writing and started playing a bit with social media, people would find me anyway, and then they’d come to the clinic. And, you know, this was pre-COVID, so people would have to travel and they would often travel for many hours across the country coming to tell me not only were they having menopausal symptoms, but they had had them for a long period of time, that they had given up their job. A lot of them, their partners had left them, and a lot of them had really bad psychological symptoms. Yet they weren’t depressed and actually a lot of them I worked out about 70 percent of them had already been on anti-depressants, which hadn’t helped.
Dr Louise Newson [00:08:06] So these women were in crisis, and I also quite quickly realised that a lot of these women did not have money. They really just wanted anything they could do to get better. So a lot of them, some of them had taken loans. Some of them had had it as a birthday present. Christmas present, there were people from all ethnicities, all backgrounds just wanting their own hormones. And after about six months or so, I just thought, actually, this is awful. I really cannot understand what is going on. I did not know it happened outside my GP practise. I would always talk to people about hormones and share the decision making and give them to those that wanted them. So I actually, despite building up my clinic, have spent so much time as you know and resources of my own. Just to add, I don’t get sponsored by any companies. I don’t work for any pharmaceutical companies. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out how do I reach people who won’t be in my clinic? I would be naive if I thought I could run a clinic where I could help 13 million women who are menopausal in the UK or 1.2 billion women worldwide. Of course I can’t do that and I don’t want to.
Dr Louise Newson [00:09:23] I’m not really business minded. So that’s why I quite quickly thought, well, the website’s great, but we can do more. So I really work very hard, as you know, to launch balance app, and I wanted that to be free, but I didn’t want external funding. We had some lovely, great funding from the Oglesbys, but that wasn’t an investment for them to make money from. That was for them to really help us, and we’ve obviously given money as well. And so that’s working, which is great. But the other thing that’s really difficult is this lack of good quality education for healthcare professionals. And you know, as some of you might have heard before, I had no proper formal menopause training. I’ve always used a lot of self-directed learning because I’ve been very privileged that I’ve worked part time as a doctor. And when I say part time, everyone laughs. But I’ve had lots of part time jo bs, so i’ve always worked beyond full time…
Lauren Redfern [00:10:21] I was going to say part time to me?
Dr Louise Newson [00:10:23] No, but I’ve never done nine… well I did when I was a junior doctor, I worked horrendous hours. But when I had my first daughter, I went part time in general practise, but I filled the other time with medical writing and everything else. But the beauty is, you know, of writing is you have to research, you know, the probably the hour that you spend writing is probably 10 hours in the background of reading and understanding. And I’ve written a lot. I’ve written a few books on evidence-based medicine for GP’s in the past. And so when you write, it gives you that space to really think about things. And so when I became a menopause specialist, I had a lot of time to really think and not just take things at face value and go back and read lots and lots and lots because there is actually of evidence about how safe HRT is, how effective it is, but also because I’m a physician, not a gynaecologist. I’m very, very interested in disease prevention and the background of having an immunology and pathology degree. I’m very interested in why do we get diseases? What happens at a cellular level, what goes wrong in our bodies? Why do we get this inflammation that worsens as we age? And why do we get this accelerated inflammation when we don’t have our hormones? And so having all this, it’s like a big jigsaw puzzle, isn’t it?
Lauren Redfern [00:11:52] Absolutely, yeah.
Dr Louise Newson [00:11:52] And piece by piece, it’s coming together. But actually, what I do understand and realise is that healthcare professionals are not as fortunate as me. They’re not as privileged to have time that I’ve had over the last 25 years or so. So I have spent time sort of always criticising healthcare professionals because I see what happens when women are not given evidence-based information or, more importantly, not given shared decision making in their consultations. So rather than just complaining about things all the time, because no one likes wingers. Again is trying to think, what can we do and so that’s where the education programme, the Confidence in the Menopause education programme came on. But a few years ago, I was thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have a menopause society where like minded individuals could come together and make a difference?’ But when I said that if some people, they just laughed and said, ‘Louise, come on, don’t be ridiculous. How would you set up a society?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m sure people coud help.’ So it’s been a bit on the back burner. But now we’ve got the education programme and we’ve had over 19,000 healthcare professionals download it. There’s a real thirst for knowledge, and I’ve been very fortunate that there’s been some great people, as you know, who have worked with me behind the scenes who believe in what I’m trying to do. But shared knowledge is so important, and it gets the uncertainty out, and actually there’s so much that we talk about is risks, risks, risks all the time and we forget about the benefits and we forget about patient choice. And so I think having this society is to me, really exciting to make a big difference.
Lauren Redfern [00:13:45] And I think that leads me to the question that I had, really, which is we’re here because you came up with the idea to launch a society. And I love that by the way, this kind of ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it’, but that’s just such a wonderful attitude and somehow it does get done. And I wanted to spend some time really talking through the Newson Health Menopause Society and what that vision is for you for that society and why you felt forming the society was needed. Obviously, we do know that there are other international menopause societies and I’m curious to know how you see this differing and that space that it’s going to fill.
Dr Louise Newson [00:14:20] Yeah. So I think there’s lots of reasons really that I thought I wanted a society where, so just to be clear to everyone who’s listening, I’ve got a not for profit company, so this is very different to my clinic. It’s a not for profit company we set up for research and education. It’s called Newson Health Research and Education because I wanted the research to really put menopause back on the map. And menopause researches, as you know, has been neglected for so long. So that’s really important. Education is really important, and I’m very fortunate because I’ve spent most of my career doing education, and I’ve been very privileged to work with the Royal College of GP’s, various other organisations. So that the other thing is about societies is there are lots of societies for diabetes, for asthma, for example, for heart disease, you name it. There’s all sorts of societies. And there’s often actually primary care and secondary care societies as well. But with the menopause, there are quite a few, like you say, across the world.
Dr Louise Newson [00:15:23] There are lots of different menopause societies, but not many really for primary care, they’re more actually for gynaecologists and run by gynaecologists, which is great. But when I go to some of these meetings for the societies, it’s great because I meet like minded people. We have some very inspirational lectures, but I think I have quite a short attention span. So when I sit and listen to a lecture, I quite quickly get a bit bored and I’m a bit fidgety and I’m checking my emails or I’m going on Instagram or whatever, which is not very good is it for the speaker? But I also think, ‘Oh, do you know, it’s quite hard going to a conference when I’ve got three children and my husband’s busy, so I’ve got to get childcare, I’ve got to pay, I’ve got to…’ you know, all these things. So I think about accessibility, and I just think about the sheer volume of what we’re trying to do and the number of healthcare professionals that need to be involved. And the other thing I think since I’ve seen more patients is that I’ve realised which I didn’t realise five or six years ago how the perimenopause and menopause are multidisciplinary.
Lauren Redfern [00:16:27] Absolutely.
Dr Louise Newson [00:16:27] It’s a multidisciplinary condition. So we see so many women who have seen cardiologists for their palpitations, they’ve seen neurologists for their memory loss or headaches, they’ve seen ENT surgeons for their tinnitus, they’ve see an ophthalmologist for their dry eyes, they’ve seen rheumatologist for their sore joints and painful muscles, they’ve seen bladder specialists, you know, for their urinary symptoms. You know, the list goes on and on and on; psychiatrist, psychologist, pelvic floor physiotherapist, you know, marriage counsellors, they’re all there! But no one is picking up the pieces. So actually my vision for the society is to have it really multidisciplinary. And you know, I’ve already said it’s going to be it’s this isn’t a UK problem. This is a global problem. So let’s try and reach as many countries as possible, and let’s try and involve as many healthcare professionals as possible. And also, I don’t mind if women join the society as well. You know, as in when I say women, I mean non-healthcare professionals. It’s really just making it very open because it sounds very grandiose, but my sort of mission if you like, is to improve the global health of women. Well, I can’t do that on my own, for goodness sake. So, you know, if we can educate people who are suffering with the perimenopause and menopause, as I’ve already said, there’s 1.2 billion of them, if we can educate those with the balance app, if we can then educate healthcare professionals through having some basic training, and then the icing on the cake as the society, then actually my clinic will close, I’ll be very happy because my job is done then. Because if we invest properly as in not money, but time and knowledge for the perimenopause and menopause, we know without doubt the future health of women will improve.
Lauren Redfern [00:18:20] You mentioned the reading that as a medical writer, the reading that you would do, and I think there has been research, as you say, looking at it from a data perspective. But when I actually first started researching this topic, I was fascinated and quite shocked by the lack of research being undertaken that explored not just the experience of those taking HRT, but perimenopausal and menopausal health in general, and how that can have a profound impact on women’s well-being or people’s well-being who are going through perimenopause or menopause. And I think what’s been interesting to me in observing the movement of the work that you do is it has been pushing the envelope to think exactly about that, which is how much not only there is an unmet need for treatment and support, but also how much more we need to know how these disciplines are connected, how physiotherapists are able to exist in conversation with immunologists and GP’s. And I think that’s a really lovely vision for the society and that global connection. And I didn’t know that you had an immunology degree, actually, until I think we spoke about it last during COVID and you were interested in the relationship that exists between hormones and our immune response. And I think it indicates how exciting that is in bringing together health disciplines.
Lauren Redfern [00:19:40] And I wondered if you wanted to talk a bit about how we can encourage that connection beyond the society. You know, with these podcasts, we’ll be talking to different people each week, and a lot of the feedback has been that I’ve had so far has been the same, which is in an ideal world we’d all talk to each other, but that it’s quite hard to facilitate that. So is that sort of your thoughts for this to try and continue that?
Dr Louise Newson [00:20:01] Yeah, I think so. I think in medicine it can be very isolating, actually. And as you know, I’ve done lots of hospital medicine. And when I was in New Zealand, just I went for a year after I did my junior house jobs and I worked with some amazing people and I remember doing a job in diabetes. But actually, it was all about diabetes. And, you know, you just didn’t think about the bigger picture. And actually, I was in Canada for my lecture for this long time ago in 92. But they very much if someone was in hospital and they had a chest infection, they would get the respiratory doctors to come. If they had palpitations, a cardiologist would come. So it became very fragmented. And this is in the 90s, and I thought then, wow, gosh, we don’t do that. Someone was on our ward and I was working for a neurologist and they had a chest infection. I would just give them antibiotics, but that’s changed now, and everyone is very, very focussed and in some ways, that’s very good. But in other ways, you lose the basics, and medicine is very, very holistic. You only need to look at how nutrition affects our health. But none of us know anything about nutrition because we don’t get taught it at medical school.
Dr Louise Newson [00:21:12] No one thinks about the bigger picture, and I think with the immunology, it boils down to a cellular level about how healthy our immune system is. Because when we talk about immune system, it’s not just fighting disease, as in not just fighting infections, it’s reducing risk of all these inflammatory diseases, which are, as you know, heart disease, osteoporosis, even clinical depression, dementia. So we forget that and we forget about all the systems that are involved. And so I also if you think about the sheer number of people, we’ve talked about numbers, but if you think of percentages, you know, 51 percent of the population will be menopausal. So if you think about the average age, not that anyone’s average, of the menopause is 51. Most people are perimenopausal before that time. So by default, everyone in their 40s would either be perimenopausal or that have had an early menopause and be menopausal. So if you just took and looked at women who in their 40s attending NHS clinics. There must be a lot of those women. But if you then said to every one of those women, ‘Do you think any of your symptoms can be due to your hormones? Have you downloaded the balance app?’ You know, when you go and see a doctor or a nurse, we always get asked to do our blood pressure or do a wee sample. Actually, that’s not really that helpful compared to really asking that very simple question and asking women to do a bit of homework and working it out. If then we said, ‘Well, do you think you’d like your hormones back because there’s evidence to support that they’re safer. You know, women who take HRT, it’s more beneficial than risky. It has future health benefits, and it will likely make you feel better.’ Then actually, we could reduce so much work to the NHS and we would also improve the health of women.
Dr Louise Newson [00:23:09] As you know, people don’t really care so much about women. If this was a men’s problem, we wouldn’t even be talking tonight on this podcast, Lauren, because men would not suffer in the way that women are. But if we could reduce work to the NHS, but we have to do it, like I say, as a multi-disciplinary process because otherwise women will get missed because most of us, myself included, when we’re perimenopausal, don’t always know that it’s our hormones. You know that the first time we get palpitations, we think it’s because we’ve had an extra glass of wine or a cup of coffee or we’re stressed. You know our muscles are sore, that’s just because we’ve been unloading the dishwasher a thousand times a day and no one’s been helping us and we’re just tired. We just don’t think the same way. And so healthcare professionals need to be in hyper alert thinking about it, and it’s worth asking them because they will see women day in, day out in their clinical practise. Maybe paediatricians, you could argue, don’t need to know as much. But then my youngest patient only had one natural period and became menopausal at 14. So every speciality has to know about the menopause without fail.
Lauren Redfern [00:24:25] Absolutely. And I mean, I do, and I’ve spoken to you about it in the past and saying, I think it’s a tricky position for GP’s to be in over the fact that the system that we currently have in place in the NHS and I’m actually recording this from America and having experienced the US system here. I mean, I could not be more patriotic and in love with our NHS system for the fact that we can just go to the doctor when we need to. But there is something to be said on having assigned for each patient seven minutes and if you have a woman that’s coming to you, and I mean, this was interesting for me first getting into this research and realising there is a crossover between women’s experience of anxiety and depression and how that can easily be missed and seen as a mental health issue, and that you can see in seven minutes perhaps that feels most appropriate for a GP. So I think it’s also a feel perhaps what this society is also doing is allowing that conversation for professionals to exist to say we have to work together to inform one another because it can’t all be up to the GP their own in that way. Yeah.
Dr Louise Newson [00:25:28] And I think that certainly is what is happening more and more. And I’ve noticed that certainly over the last year. I think maybe with balance, you know, we know balance users are far more likely to receive the treatment that they want, but they’re leading the consultation. And actually, you know, there has been a change. We’ve got the shared decision making guidance that came out by NICE in 2021. We have to put patients at the centre, but patients have to lead their consultations. But I think patients owe it to their physicians or healthcare providers to do their homework.
Lauren Redfern [00:25:59] Absolutely.
Dr Louise Newson [00:25:59] And I think that’s really important when our resources, not just in the UK but worldwide are limited for healthcare, time is at an essence really. So I think we really should be going to our healthcare practitioner and say, ‘Look, I think that I might be perimenopausal or menopausal. This is my Health Report that I’ve downloaded from balance. Now let’s talk about it. And even if you’ve only got a very short seven minutes, you can get a lot done in seven minutes. If you know where you’re coming from and if the healthcare professional doesn’t know, then actually they can have a two minute consultation and say, ‘I’m really sorry. This isn’t my area of expertise, but I’ll tell you what, I’m on a training programme I’ll know more soon. In the meantime, you could see this person or that person.’ No one minds if they’re given that sort of information. They do mind if they’re, you know, cut short and told, ‘No, you can’t have any treatment.’
Lauren Redfern [00:26:58] And I suppose the work that’s being done as well to empower women to feel confident to know, actually no there’s something more going on here than just depression and anxiety, I know my body, I know myself and I know that something is wrong. And I think the more we push that conversation, encourage people to continue talking and it filters through and we make it necessary for people, as you say, to do their homework.
Lauren Redfern [00:27:18] I wanted to ask you, it’s a very broad question, and I suddenly thought about it and I thought, I wonder if anyone’s ever asked you this before, but why menopause? You talk about your prior experience and the different parts of medicine that you’ve worked in. And I wondered if there was a particular reason that this area of medicine interested you and what made you feel? Yeah, that’s my place and space.
Dr Louise Newson [00:27:39] Yeah. And I said at the beginning, I don’t really have a future plan. I’ve never really thought much about it. Everything I do in my life is rather sort of reactive and proactive, I suppose. And I think when I first started to do a bit more menopause work as a GP, I started to really enjoy it because it was, it still is transformational medicine. You can transform women’s lives, you can help them because their symptoms reduce or go away. But also you rub your hands with glee because you know that their future health is going to improve. So there’s nothing else. Diabetes is similar if you can get good diabetic control with sugar levels being within normal ranges, that’s really good, but it’s not as powerful.
Dr Louise Newson [00:28:25] But I suppose when I was doing general practise, I was told off a lot because my partners that worked with me really, really didn’t like HRT. So we’d have some stand up rows about it and I found it very uncomfortable. And then when the NICE guidance came out, I thought, good. This is confirming that HRT is not as bad as everyone else thinks it is. And then I suppose I’ve just been carried and lifted by stories actually, and their sad stories and really distressing stories. And now I sort of feel like I can’t stop.
Dr Louise Newson [00:28:59] But I never really thought about the enormity of the menopause before. I just thought it was an inconvenience as opposed to a huge health risk and a global economic risk as well. If we don’t get it right and I remember going to my first menopause society, it was the International Menopause Society conference and it was in Amsterdam and it was in 2016. And I went there and Dr. Robert Langer was there giving a talk, and he was one of the investigators from the WHI, this Women’s Health Initiative study that has made so many people scared of HRT. And he said this is the biggest travesty to women’s health and it is taking years to change. And he talked about the injustice and he talked about the evidence. And it was just a really amazing lecture that stuck with me and I just sat there in the auditorium thinking, ‘What can I do? How can I help? Who am I? I’m nothing compared to these people who are lecturing.’ So the only thing I thought I could do is, let’s just get it out there for women. Let women decide what they want.
Dr Louise Newson [00:30:16] But it’s very addictive. And I think it’s also very addictive because I’ve managed to create this sort of arena where we’ve got some amazing people working together. And when I decided to set up this society and Lucy Chatwin, as you know, is heading it, I said, ‘I really want a really good advisory board.’ And I gave her a list of people who really I hold in very high esteem. And I was absolutely shocked and surprised, but delighted when all these people said yes. And you know, you’ve been to some of the board meetings. Yes, it’s just the most amazing experience because, you know, none of this is about me. It’s about helping others and working as a team.
Dr Louise Newson [00:31:00] And I’m really shocked because I have had a lot of battering from other healthcare professionals and a lot of healthcare professionals don’t always work closely together in this team approach. But there’s this real feeling that we want to change the narrative for the menopause and the future health for all our generations going forwards, and I feel we can do it because there’s this great momentum really that’s going on.
Lauren Redfern [00:31:28] I agree. I’m genuinely actually really sad to say I think that’s all we’ve really got time to chat about today. I mean, I need more than half an hour with you. It’s just tip of the iceberg.
Dr Louise Newson [00:31:37] That’s fine. I can come back! If you’ll invite me back I’ll come back another time.
Lauren Redfern [00:31:40] It’s just fascinating. And I wanted to end these podcasts, not quite in the same vein as you, because I know you have your three points at the end of each podcast. But I wondered if you had any take-home messages that you might like to stress. So, yeah, anything to stress today for those listening that could be about the society or really about menopause in general.
Dr Louise Newson [00:31:59] I do feel weirdly optimistic.
Lauren Redfern [00:32:02] Do you think weidlly?
Dr Louise Newson [00:32:03] I’m a very pessimistic person and I feel like the society could make a real difference. And I’m really thrilled. It feels like it’s the right time actually. If I’d set it up a few years ago I don’t think it would have had the same impact, and I wouldn’t have known all the people that I know now, who I’m so grateful for to work with. And I feel like we can really make a difference. But I also feel that this is not just a single voice or just the advisory board that decide. We want women, men, children, healthcare professionals to shape it and to determine the future because it’s overwhelming what we need to do. There’s a huge amount of research. There’s lots of things we need to do. But I think we can do it more and more by working together. So it’s not a rigid society. It’s very fluid, and I’m really intrigued to see where it’s going to go over the next few months. And yeah, actually. So and I’m very grateful to your Lauren for doing the podcast as well. I’m looking forward to listening to those as they come out.
Lauren Redfern [00:33:10] I hope I can hold the podcast batton well for you. And, you know, I think as I started with today, I think something that needs to be said really from not just me, but the thousands of people that you have helped over the years get their lives back on track. It’s a really big thank you for what you’re doing. And I’m really excited to see how this society takes shape and how it starts connecting people around the world and ultimately broadening the conversation and our thinking about the perimenopause and menopause. So I’m excited. I’m optimistic.
Dr Louise Newson [00:33:42] Great. Great!
Lauren Redfern [00:33:44] Great. Well, thank you so much, Louise. And like I said, I would love to have you back soon.
Dr Louise Newson [00:33:49] Oh, thanks, Lauren. Thank you.
Lauren Redfern [00:33:54] We would love for you to join our collective of professionals passionate about the menopause. Visit nhmenopausesociety.org to become an associate. You will receive regular webinars and advice from our experts, as well as opportunities to network and connect with the latest research from around the world. You can follow us on Twitter at nhmenosociety. And don’t forget to tell your colleagues about the Newson Health Menopause Society.
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