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090: How perimenopause affects admin with Mel Kettle
2.8k Plays10 months ago
In this episode, Mel Kettle discusses perimenopause with Mia and Dinah and its impact on mental load, productivity, and life admin. Perimenopause is the transitional phase leading up to menopause, marked by hormonal changes and various symptoms. It can last for a significant period of time, during which women may experience changes in their menstrual cycle, hot flushes, night sweats, and other physical symptoms. However, what is often not discussed are the cognitive symptoms, such as brain fog, increased anxiety, and short-term memory loss. Get tips for navigating this transition.
Resources
- The Art of Adulting
- Mel Kettle's website
- Australasian Menopause Society
- Dr. Jen Gunter's book "The Menopause Manifesto"
- Dr. Jen Gunter's Instagram: @DrJenGunter
- Lara Bryden's book "Hormone Repair Manual"
- "Not My Mother's Menopause" podcast
For the full shownotes, head to Life Admin Life Hacks.
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm Dinero Roberts, an operations manager who found discussions with my friends and my own research significantly more helpful than the medical profession in dealing with my own perimenopause symptoms. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who would like to see a puberty v. menopause battle to determine which one is actually worse.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
Understanding Perimenopause and Menopause
00:00:34
Speaker
In this episode, Mia talked to Mel Kessel, an expert in self-leadership, who revealed the defining stages of perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause, and how perimenopause symptoms could be contributing to anxiety in a busy season of life, and the conversations and resources you need to have to navigate this transition. If you're a woman with a body, or know a woman with a body, then this episode is for you.
00:00:58
Speaker
Listeners, two things to update you on before we get into it. First, we're running Operation Optimize, a series of free masterclasses from February 5th. If you want to set a better routine and rhythm for your week, have more motivation and less procrastination, cut your cost of living without cutting your creature comforts,
00:01:17
Speaker
or do a deep dive on the categories of life admin, then register for these webinars today. Head to lifeadminlifehacks.com for dates and times. And if you can't make the four live sessions, register so we can send you the recordings afterwards. Secondly, and most importantly, doors open next week to the art of adulting, our membership program featuring monthly master classes,
00:01:39
Speaker
mindset sessions and co-working sessions, the ultimate productivity hack where you do an hour of power alongside other community members. If you are just starting to get your life admin under control, select the streamline or shine memberships to get the systems, process, strategy, scripts and tools you need to get organized. And if you have our book already, Life Admin Hacks, or you've listened to this podcast for some time, the sustained membership might be the right level of inspiration and accountability you need to get the results you want.
00:02:08
Speaker
We're welcoming new members for one week only, so don't miss out and head to lifeadminlifehacks.com to learn more about the different membership options and which one is the best fit for you.
Impact of Perimenopause on Women's Lives
00:02:20
Speaker
Mel Kettle is a food loving book reading beachgoer who lives on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. He's a trusted mentor to executives and leaders and a highly sought after speaker and trainer on leadership communication and setting healthy boundaries.
00:02:33
Speaker
After surviving the debilitating effects of work-related loneliness, stress and burnout in her late 20s, Mel believes self-leadership is essential to create a real connection and sustained engagement. In both 2022 and 2023, Mel was recognized by Leaders Hum as one of the top 200 biggest voices in leadership, one of only seven Australians on the list. She's the author of two books, the best-selling Fully Connected and The Social Association.
00:03:01
Speaker
She loves her work, her husband, and life in general. I love that line, Mel. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Oh, it's so great to be here. Thanks for having me, Mia. So, Mel, most of our listeners are women and a huge proportion of them are about to enter their forties or squarely in their forties or fifties.
00:03:19
Speaker
And it seems as a woman, as soon as you hit that age bracket, all anyone can talk about is perimenopause. And in your line of work, this is a topic that's come into the forefront in organizations because research has shown that 60% of women aged 45 to 55 say their symptoms have a negative impact on them at work. And because life admin draws on many skills that we use in paid work, we wanted to explore how perimenopause can impact
00:03:45
Speaker
how we handle life admin too. It's such a massive topic and I'm so happy that so many people are talking about it. It's one of the things I love talking about the most because when I started my perimenopause experience, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I was in my early 40s, I came off the pill
00:04:04
Speaker
I gained 10 kilos in 10 weeks and then I gained another 10 kilos over about the next six months. And it was just really depressing. I spoke to my doctor who was a woman who said, you're too young, come back when you're 52 and I'll put you on HRT. I'm just like, that's really not helpful.
00:04:22
Speaker
10 years is a long time to be enduring those symptoms. I know. And I was done and dusted by 48. So if I'd waited until I was 52 and I'm 53 now, then it just would have been too late. But we talk a lot about the physical symptoms of perimenopause, the hot flushes, the night sweats, the changes to our periods, either less or more itchy skin and other symptoms that are physical.
00:04:51
Speaker
The thing that never really gets talked about is the brain fog and the increased anxiety and the short-term memory loss. And they are the things that had the biggest impact on me personally, but also on my ability to run a household. Yeah, absolutely. I just forgot stuff.
00:05:09
Speaker
So my symptoms kicked in when I was about 42 and I remember sitting at work and just feeling suddenly so hot and thinking, oh my God, I'm coming down with a virus. Like I've just broken out in this sweat and I kept sweating all day and I'm like, oh my God, I'm sick. I'm caught something and going to the doctor and then suggesting that I get some blood tests done. And I'm like,
00:05:31
Speaker
I'm only 42. Isn't this supposed to happen next decade? Seven years later, still in the throes of symptoms. No sign of abating. No sign of abating. Before we get into it, can you just provide a little overview of what perimenopause is and how it's different from menopause? Because menopause used to be the word you'd hear and perimenopause
00:05:54
Speaker
feels like it was invented in the last 10 years, so I'm sure it wasn't. I don't think it was, but menopause, from a medical perspective, menopause is just one day, and it's that one day that marks 12 months since you last had a period. And so everything that happens before that day is perimenopause, and everything that happens after that day is post-menopause. And as you mentioned earlier, perimenopause can last for a really long time.
00:06:20
Speaker
So it starts, it often starts without us even knowing because it starts when our hormones start changing. We start to have less estrogen and you know other hormones just you know they change their makeup from what works for us. And so some of the things
00:06:36
Speaker
that we recognise the most obvious symptom that most women have of menopause or perimenopause is that their periods change. They're either more frequent or they're less frequent or they are significantly heavier or they're a lot lighter. There's really no one-size-fits-all, which is really frustrating. Quite often, you don't even know what's happening until your periods just stop.
00:07:01
Speaker
As you mentioned, 60% of women have symptoms that are quite debilitating. 20% of women have no obvious symptoms at all other than their change in their period. And by change in their period, it's just that it slows down and then it stops. So it's not a debilitating change. It's a, ooh, it's less this month, isn't that good? Yeah, I find it fascinating just the variability
00:07:23
Speaker
in the way symptoms manifest. And, you know, you hear things too about culturally related to ethnicity, how perimenopause symptoms can manifest. I think a lot of my friends, the sort of first inkling of it was actually related to insomnia and anxiety. Suddenly they can't sleep. Suddenly they're just feeling anxious all of the time. And they are actually thinking this is because they're in a season of life where things are busy, they're juggling work and kids, and there's a lot going on. And a few times,
00:07:54
Speaker
I've said to friends, have you actually got your hormones checked? Because it could be perimenopause. It might not actually be, you know, just you reacting to the stressful situations in your life. It could be hormonally driven. And lo and behold, they go and get some form of HRT and the insomnia and the anxiety goes away, thank goodness.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah and you're absolutely right for so many women it is that anxiety and I know for me the anxiety was really crippling and it wasn't until many years into it that I was told it was a symptom of perimenopause. I just thought I was losing my mind and for a while I thought I had early onset dementia which you know Alzheimer's runs in my family
00:08:32
Speaker
And it can be really scary. So the one thing that I suggest is if you're feeling scared, find someone to talk to. Find a good doctor who specializes in midlife women's health. And a great place to go to find that person is the Australasian Menopause Society. They have a directory on their website of women who have passed a training program that they run or who have self-identified. Usually they've had to do some kind of training around menopause.
00:09:00
Speaker
so that you know that you're getting someone who knows what they're talking about. Yeah, crucial. So, Mel, are there specific challenges that women face during perimenopause that you feel often go unnoticed or aren't widely discussed? I think, as you've said, it's the forgetfulness. And when it comes to life admin, that is the thing that can have the biggest impact.
00:09:20
Speaker
I know there was a period in that time where I was responsible for paying all the household bills. And we had a late fee for pretty much every single bill for about two years because I just forgot and didn't have a good system for capturing it. And so eventually my husband, who is an accountant, said, I'll take over the money. And I went, that'd be great. You don't need to take over all the money, but you can pay the bills. Yeah, that's like a fair thing. Yeah. So this is, I guess, a moment where it
Advocating for Menopause Awareness
00:09:49
Speaker
becomes
00:09:49
Speaker
more important than ever to lean on tools and lean on systems so that, you know, if you can automate things so that you don't have to keep on top of so many things, do we know what is actually going on in the body that's creating this sort of brain fog or this forgetfulness?
00:10:05
Speaker
I think it's just a change in our hormones, you know, the estrogen, the progesterone, the testosterone. There's so much that we don't know about menopause and about midlife women's health because it's never had money thrown at it. And that's one of the reasons that I'm so happy to be on this podcast with you talking about it, because the more women who are prepared to share their experiences and ask questions and raise awareness
00:10:29
Speaker
then the more of us will know about it and be prepared. It's like that expression of rising tide floats or boats. We believe that our generation Gen X, my generation Gen X, has a responsibility to the women who come after me so that they don't have that sense of fear and uncertainty and anxiety of this stage in life.
00:10:51
Speaker
You know, I'm through it now. And while I still do have some symptoms, because just because you hit menopause that magic day doesn't mean everything just stops, unfortunately. But I now know what causes it. And so if I'm forgetful, I know what, you know, I've got ways that I can prepare myself to remember if I am going to have hot flushes, then thankfully they're gone. But, you know, you you have a greater understanding of what is happening to you and why it's happening.
00:11:19
Speaker
So you can be more prepared, but you can also have an awareness of what questions to ask because you are more prepared. So who do you go to to get advice from and what do you need to be asking so that you get the best advice for you? Yeah, it's just occurred to me that there'd be so many listeners who probably have chilled daughters who are at the age where they're entering puberty and having to have conversations with them around
00:11:42
Speaker
you know, menstruation and discussing periods and all the hormonal changes teenagers go through. And there seems like there's such a focus in society on that phase of development. But then for women, when they hit this phase, there isn't as much discussion. There don't seem to be as many conversations happening. So yes, this is again too why we wanted to talk about it, because it is huge. And if it, you know, if it's going for 10 years or more, that is a significant portion of someone's life and it's impacting
00:12:12
Speaker
all aspects of it. It's massive. And as you've said, we're talking more about puberty. And I think the opposite of menopause is pregnancy, because that's what happens when you are at your most fertile, if you do the right things. People are happy to talk about pregnancy. People are happy to talk about how they got pregnant. People are happy to talk about all of the ins and outs and the nitty gritty. And so why don't we do that with menopause?
00:12:37
Speaker
And one of the reasons I think we don't is because society values youth and beauty, and menopause comes at a time when you're not young anymore. And I'm not saying that 40 or 50 is old because it definitely isn't, but society has this view that once a woman hits 50, she's really passed her prime. Well, 50 is 70-70, so let's...
00:13:01
Speaker
Get over the hole, you're past your prime. I've learned to live to 100, so you know. I've gone a long way to go. This is infancy, really. So what do you recommend to people or to women about how to address things about their productivity and their performance during this phase?
Managing Productivity During Perimenopause
00:13:21
Speaker
I think the first thing you need to think about is how is this impacting me? What are the things, what are the changes that I'm noticing in my body and my mind? And what do I need to be more aware of? And what do I need to be more aware of in relation to how I do my job and how I live my life and how I run my household or how I have influence in my household? And so think about things like if you're becoming more forgetful, what are some of the tools that you can use to help remind you?
00:13:49
Speaker
I have never used my calendar so much as I did for reminders than when I was in my 40s. And now I'm in a habit of everything goes in my calendar. I've probably got 30 alarms on my phone and they go off. But, you know, every morning I'm like, right, what do I need to remember to do today? And it will be things like go to Pilates. It will be things like go to the mail, get the mailbox, go to the mailbox. It'll be particular meetings or phone calls.
00:14:14
Speaker
So if I'm doing something else and I know that I'm going to be distracted, then I set an alarm, so I remember. Things like reminders to pay the bills. When you get an email in, how do you manage that? If you've got kids or if you've got older parents who you're hoping to support, what are the things that you need to be remembering for that?
00:14:32
Speaker
time can go really quickly, as we all know. And, you know, one of the things that I put in my diary after my mother died, which was about ages ago, I put in my calendar once a week called that. And it wasn't that I didn't remember to call him, but I could think that I'd called him last week and it could have been a month. Time just sort of evolves really quickly as you get older. So what are some of the things that you need to do to give you that reminder to do the important things?
00:14:59
Speaker
Hmm, they're great suggestions, Mel. Thanks for sharing those. And what are you seeing in terms of workplaces about how they're supporting women? You know, this is new territory for a lot of organizations. And so there must be, you know, listeners out there who are thinking, I am really suffering. I, I don't know, cannot imagine having a discussion with a manager or someone from HR, unless, you know, at some progressive place where that is vocal about it. Talk to me about your work in this area with organizations.
00:15:29
Speaker
One of the things that's really important to realise is that approximately 20% of the workplace is made up of women who are currently going through perimenopause. And most workplaces, if you take the average workplace, it's 20% to 25% of your workforce has women going through perimenopause.
00:15:45
Speaker
Now, I've worked with clients who've said we're very female centric in our organisation. One of my clients has 80% of their workforce is women. And so it's many, many more than 25%. And I run workshops to help organisations understand
00:16:01
Speaker
How can they have the conversation? One woman rang me after a workshop and she said, I've just realized that of my team of 150, 147 of us are currently going through perimenopause because we're all in our 40s with the exception of three people who are men.
00:16:18
Speaker
And they need to know too. So some of the work that I do is just around, not just, but it's around encouraging organisations to have conversations that are tricky and difficult around menopause so that we can help break down that stigma and get rid of the taboo topic of menopause.
00:16:36
Speaker
And one of the things that I've really found is that by encouraging conversation, and it doesn't need to be, you know, deep and meaningful, here's what's happening to me, it's just around an awareness of, okay, we've got seven people in our team who are in their 40s, let's make an assumption that at some stage in the next, you know, year or two or three,
00:17:01
Speaker
you will start to have some symptoms of menopause if you're not already. And it's having conversations with the group and saying, how can we support you? What do you want? What do you need from us? Because as we mentioned earlier, every woman's experience is different, and we all need something else. So how can you have flexibility to provide the support that's needed? Yeah, so what kind of supports are organisations making? Because I'm wondering,
00:17:30
Speaker
You know, what is it that women really need at this moment? What kind of support can be offered? I feel the biggest thing is just flexible workplaces. So I know for me when I was going through perimenopause, I worked for myself and I worked from home and I'm so incredibly grateful that I did because it meant that I had control of the temperature of my office. So I could blast the air conditioning or I could, you know, sit in my underwear if I had to.
00:17:59
Speaker
I didn't have to put makeup on because I just would sweat it all off. If I was tired, like there were some days I would have three naps because I'd not sleep at night. I'd wake up and I'd get up between three and four because I'd just be awake. I'd do a bit of work. I'd have a nap at seven o'clock in the morning. I'd do a bit more work. I'd might have a nap at 11 o'clock.
00:18:19
Speaker
And then I probably have a nap in the afternoon. You can't do that in a workplace. So having a
Workplace Comfort and Menopause
00:18:25
Speaker
flexible workplace that encourages women or allows women, and not just women, but men as well, to ring up in the morning and say, hey, I had a really bad sleep last night. I'm going to work from home today. I don't have any meetings or I don't have anything that's going to impact on the team if I work from home today.
00:18:42
Speaker
The other thing that I think a lot of places forget about as well is so many women have to wear a uniform to work. What does that uniform look like? What's it made of? Is it made from polyester or is it made from a breathable fabric? I know my husband works for a supermarket and he wears Apollo shirt and shorts to work. They've just changed the composition of the shirts from a cotton shirt to something that's made from recycled plastics.
00:19:10
Speaker
And all I can think is, wow, that will be really unpleasant. In Queensland in summer, it's unpleasant. If you're a menopausal woman living in Queensland or anywhere in Australia, really in summer when it's hot and you have to wear a polyester shirt, that's going to get revolting very quickly.
00:19:31
Speaker
As you were saying that Mel, I was thinking there have been so many times during my career where I've worked in offices where someone will have a discreet little fan blowing on them in their little cubicle. And I've never sort of joined the dots and thought, huh, maybe they were sitting there, you know, suffering through hot flashes. And so they've got their own little personal fan. Yep. And the other thing I was thinking about is
00:19:52
Speaker
You know, before I realized I was experiencing perimenopause symptoms and I was waking up with the night sweats and had insomnia, it's sort of, you know, it's not that you have a bad sleep one night, it's that every night
00:20:05
Speaker
you are sleep deprived. It's sort of, you get into that rhythm of just waking up hot, taking ages to fall asleep again, or just having the insomnia. And it kind of reminded me of when you have a newborn and you just have so many weeks or months of broken sleep and how debilitating that is. So I guess when you were talking to a workplace and saying, I need the flexibility so I can catch up on sleep, it's not that you just had one bad night, it's that you coping with weeks or months worth of sleep deprivation.
00:20:34
Speaker
I reckon I averaged five hours sleep a night for about five years. And I need seven to eight, preferably eight to nine to function. And so as most of us do, but the other thing you mentioned is like having a newborn. Our hormones start changing from our late thirties, early forties. I have an enormous number of friends who have had a baby in their early forties. And so can you imagine having a newborn or a young child and going through like seriously?
00:21:03
Speaker
Well, that's when I was incredulous because I was only maybe like six months out from stopping breastfeeding my son. So I think, you know, I had him when I was 39, he breastfed for a really long time. And I'm like, hang on. I've just finished doing that. And now I'm, my body's packing up a shop and going, all right, all bets are off. Perimenopause. Here we come.
00:21:25
Speaker
I could not believe it.
00:21:42
Speaker
And I wonder also whether, and this is getting a bit personal so you can just delete or cut me off, but I've got a lot of friends and I've got a lot of relatives who had many children in their 20s and then had a bonus baby in their 40s. And there's a reason they're called menopause babies
Hormone Replacement Therapy and Dietary Changes
00:22:00
Speaker
because one of the things that your body can do is do a massive big oestrogen surge in your late 30s, early 40s when all the last thought of all of your eggs
00:22:10
Speaker
are released. Yeah. Yeah. And so you get pregnant. And I've got to say that I've never wanted to have kids. So when I had my last period and then didn't have, when I hit menopause, I'm like, yes, there's no babies coming now.
00:22:26
Speaker
But that's confronting for a lot of women as well. Like I was personally very happy, but most of my friends were not. Yeah. It is fascinating. I remember talking to my mum about it and she's like, oh, it happened some stage in my fifties and it was a blip I barely noticed. And I was like, okay, why? I feel like a medical anomaly. But then I asked my other side of the family and people on the other side of the family had had different sort of fertility issues. So who knows what contributes to it. Yeah. I've got all sorts of theories that I
00:22:56
Speaker
are totally, well, not the most well-informed, but yeah, it is a huge variability in when it strikes and how it strikes and how long it drags on for. Yeah. And there's, I listened to this great podcast for a while called Not My Mother's Menopause. And I feel like medical science has come a long way since our mothers went through menopause. Mine went through menopause when I was a teenager. So that was very long time ago. You know, attitudes towards things like HRT have changed.
00:23:25
Speaker
medical science has produced far more effective medical solutions to changing the impact of the symptoms that you might have. So get advice, get guidance. And if your doctor can't help you, then, you know, feel free to shop around until you find one that you gel with who will give you advice that is useful and helpful for you.
00:23:47
Speaker
Yeah. And we'll give you treatments that you're comfortable with. Absolutely. I avoided being on the contraceptive pill for most of my adult life because I just, you know, for all its wonderful things in terms of what it's given women, I just didn't like the idea of taking a pill every day for forever. And I only really went on the pill to deal with perimenopause symptoms. So I tried a whole bunch of natural remedies.
00:24:10
Speaker
None of them touched the sides. I went on the pill and literally four days later, all of the symptoms stopped. And then after taking the pill for several years, I thought, let's just see what's going on. Let's go off it. I went and I did this with a doctor to see if, you know, where things were at and try some different natural remedies again. And so I had to go off the pill for three months so that the hormones were completely out of my body so we could
00:24:34
Speaker
baseline, you know, where my natural hormone levels were and then try a whole bunch of natural remedies. It was the longest three months of my life because all the anxiety, the insomnia, the night sweats, the hot flashes, irritability all came rushing back. And then again, I'm like, this, none of this is other stuff is working for me. I'm going back on the pill. And again, within a week, all gone, gone, but you know, and the things we tried were all things that have a lot of scientific rigor.
00:25:02
Speaker
around being very successful for a lot of women, but everyone's just so individual. You really do need to pursue what works for you. Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that worked for me, I did a very hardcore elimination diet with the naturopath. It was like it reset my body. And so the hot flushes stopped. A whole lot of digestive issues I had stopped. I started sleeping better. And now I'm fairly confident that one of the reasons I started sleeping better was because I stopped having caffeine and alcohol.
00:25:29
Speaker
And so, you know, it's being aware of the impact of different things that we put into our body, whether it's, you know, food or drink or cigarettes or drugs or whatever it might be. What are the impacts that those things are having? And I know for me, caffeine, if I have I can't have caffeine after about 1130, 12 o'clock in the morning. And that includes chocolate. Like I can't even eat a couple of squares of dark chocolate in the evening because I will not sleep that night.
00:25:57
Speaker
And so it's having that knowledge and awareness so that you can make a more informed decision about when you're prepared to suffer. You know, one of the reasons that I started this podcast and wrote the book is because we wanted women to have more headspace. We wanted to give them more peace of mind and give them more time back for things that matter to them. And, you know, essentially, this is all about women's well-being. So I think when
00:26:26
Speaker
listeners who are going through busy seasons of life and have a lot of things to juggle. If this is not an aspect of your life that you've sort of really thought about and wondered how your health or whether pyrominophore symptoms might be impacting you, this is the time to start investigating it because it will have a massive impact on your wellbeing and your ability to manage all the demands of modern life.
00:26:48
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. And if you're listening and you haven't started noticing any symptoms of perimenopause yet, then start thinking about what it might look like and what the impact it might have on your life when you do. And that isn't saying that you will have all of the symptoms because you might not.
00:27:10
Speaker
But think about what are some of the hacks that you can put into your life now so that when the time comes, you're prepared, you're all over it. And how can you have the conversations in your workplace now? You know, those conversations, they need courage a lot of the time and a level of confidence that can be really difficult to find when you're deep in the throes of perimenopause.
00:27:34
Speaker
So start asking questions now of your human resources people, your wellness team, the people that run the training programs. What is it that you're doing to support women going through this phase of life? Because it is a phase and every woman who hits 50 will go through it. And the fact that more and more workplaces are becoming aware of the impact that not looking after these women has. Something like one in eight women
00:28:02
Speaker
quit their jobs because of that feeling that they can't manage their menopause symptoms, and a big job, and parents, and children, and running a household. And the easiest one to get rid of is work, because you can't really get rid of a kid or a parent. It's nice as it sometimes might be to think you could. It's quite unfair really that often when people are
00:28:27
Speaker
you know, they are ascending in their career and taking on bigger roles or accepting more responsibility or they've started their own business and their businesses in a certain place. You know, things are peaking that this is another thing thrown into your pile of things to contend with at the same time. So Mel, what resources or information do you recommend for women who want some guidance and support?
Resources for Menopause Support
00:28:47
Speaker
So if you're wanting some support or some guidance on how to have conversations in your workplace, I've got some resources you can access through my website. It's MelKettle.com.com. I also list some books and some podcasts and some other personal resources where you can go to get information. There's a couple of books that I just recommend all the time. One of them is, it's called the Menopause Manifesto by Dr. Jen Gunter, G-U-N-T-E-R. She is also on Instagram.
00:29:16
Speaker
I think her Instagram handle is Dr. Jane Gunter as well. But if you Google her, she is an OB-GYN, she's Canadian, lives in the US, and she would be one of the leading experts on menopause. She's got another fantastic book called The Vagina Bible, and she's got one coming out in 2024 called Blood, which is about menstruation. So her books are fantastic. And then the other one that I recommend a lot is by a naturopath from New Zealand called Lara Brydon,
00:29:45
Speaker
And her book is called Hormone Repair Manual. And neither of these books were out when I was going through my symptoms, but I've read them both cover to cover quite a few times, and they're excellent. And then as I mentioned before, the Australasian Menopause Society has some fantastic resources as well. Traditionally, their resources have been for doctors, but they're now moving a little bit more into the consumer space.
00:30:11
Speaker
But they do have a list, a directory of doctors in Australia, New Zealand, and a couple of other countries that have a specialisation of women's midlife health and menopause. Thank you for sharing those. There's plenty of references there for people to get into. And we'll also link to them from the show notes so you can come and find some easy clicks. You know, I think there are a lot of women out there who might have been thinking, oh, I just thought I was getting old and losing it or not coping with the amount of stress in my life.
00:30:39
Speaker
who might now be thinking, huh, maybe some of what is going on for me is related to my hormones. And I can be supported through this transition and there are steps I can take to feel better during this transition. So thank you so much for sharing that expertise and your experience with us today.
00:30:54
Speaker
Oh, you're so welcome. And I will just say, as someone who has come through the other end, I do have an occasional symptom, but they're nothing compared to what they were. Well, I feel like now I've got so much more energy, I'm really creative far more than I was before. So there's a lot of, there's research that shows when we go through menopause, when we come out the other side, we often are so much more competent and creative. So hold on to that. Yeah, there's a light at the end of that tunnel.
00:31:20
Speaker
It's not all doom and gloom. And I will tell you a funny story. I was doing an interview on Sky News last year about menopause and why we need to talk about it at work. And it was just after Queen Elizabeth died. And the journalist in our briefing said to me, can you somehow link menopause and the Queen's death? I'm like,
00:31:41
Speaker
She was a woman. Is that the link? What else? What are they suggesting? I don't know. But one of my friends said to me, well, you could always mention how she would have worked seamlessly all the way through her perimenopause and then had 40 years minimum of her career or her job.
00:32:02
Speaker
post-menopause. So, you know, women are amazing. Women, you know, we have these things that challenge us and most of us get through them. We might not feel we're unscathed, but, you know, we do get through and you will get through. You know, Mia's got some great resources now that she's putting in the show notes. So, yeah, reach out to people and talk to people if you do need some extra support. Yes, women are indomitable. OK, Mel, where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more?
00:32:30
Speaker
My website, MelKettle.com, has everything. It's got links to some short courses I've got. I run a program called Thriving Leaders, which is mostly for women in their 40s and 50s. We do talk a little bit about menopause, but we talk about how can you increase your confidence so that you can live the life you want. And I've got a course on boundaries. I've got a book fully connected. And if you want all my contact details, all my socials, just go there and you'll find them all. But I'm really happy to chat. If anyone has any questions, just get in touch.
00:33:02
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeandminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend, or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.