Women's Health Expert: It's Not Just Hormones! Why Doctors Get It Wrong For Women. Dr. Hazel Wallace

0:00This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Only 2.5 % of publicly funded research goes towards women's reproductive health. There's five times more research done on erectile dysfunction when that only impacts 20 % of men. But it's in my DNA or something as a woman to cope with everything.

0:43So could you give me three big learnings? What I want every woman to come away with is... I think that's the really most important thing. Wait! This is revolutionary! And actually, women are more likely than men to die from a heart attack in the UK. One of the big parts of it is If we see a man coming to the hospital, we think he must be serious. Whereas women are often seen as being a bit hysterical. Can we just get angry about that? How long are we going to have to bang on about that? I know. But with your body being minimised, when you find a partner who hears you, it's incredible, isn't it?

1:16Those little things just go a long way, so then girls don't think, like, I need to suffer in silence. Thank you for what you're doing for women and always having our backs. I'm talking to Dr Hazel Wallace today her new book It's Not Just A Period is out and I'm going to be talking to her about why she got into the medical profession about why it is that it's so important for us to talk about this and how we can best support each other through being a woman so please let me know what your favourite moment was from this pod and if you could just also like and subscribe that means that we can continue bringing you brilliant content like this.

2:06It's just such a pleasure to meet you because I feel like we've connected and obviously we've talked to each other before but it's just really, really, really nice to have you here. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. And I also just want to say thank you for what you're doing for women and young women and always having our backs. So thank you very much. And thank you because I feel like I'm following in your footsteps in this space. Well, it needs to happen and it needs to be done. So we're celebrating your new book. I'm just going to hold it up here. Not just a period. Yes. We were talking before about the colours of your books.

2:47I was like, oh, it's lovely you've chosen kind of similar colours for the covers of all your books. But can you just talk me through why? What was the reasoning behind it? Yeah, so I feel like in the space of like women's health and menstrual cycles, it's often just books are very medicalised, a bit boring. You don't want to gift them to someone or take them on the tube. So I wanted to really like normalise the conversation and also create a book that people are really proud to have. And like a nod to the feminine energy as well. A nod to the feminine energy, yes. Why don't we harness it? Harness it.

3:22Yeah. So Hazel, obviously you became a doctor and then you went into nutrition afterwards. But what kind of drove you into the caring profession? Was it something that you'd always wanted to do? Yeah. I will try to give you the short version of a really long story. We love the long story. You love the long story. Okay, I'll give you the long story. Take as much time as you want. So I lost my dad age 14, which is 20 years ago this year. It does not feel like that long ago. And that was not something that was expected. He was not unwell. He essentially had a stroke, but he was very fit and healthy.

4:03Went to the gym all the time, was always talking about, you know, how to keep ourselves healthy. But, you know, I think he was a businessman and I don't know how healthy his lifestyle was for the most part of his life. And because a stroke is a cardiovascular disease, it's largely related to our lifestyle. Things like blood pressure, diabetes, nutrition, lifestyle. When he passed away from that and I realized, I learned during that time that he had stenosis of his carotid arteries. to the arteries that what's that it's basically like a narrowing because there's plaque within the artery and that would be hugely related to our lifestyle so that was essentially what killed him and it was too late by the time we knew why to do anything and even at age 14 I think something that sowed a seed in my brain that like what what could I what could we have done to prevent this What, I mean, 14 is such a sensitive age and a very difficult time to lose a parent.

5:18Yeah. So I think like witnessing losing dad, being in the hospital over that week, I thought, you know, I would love to go into healthcare. So I applied for medical school in Orland and I actually didn't get in. because I also went through a really hard depressive episode in my like around age 17. I grieved quite late. Oh really 17? So how did that manifest itself? It basically me becoming really unsociable, pulling away from friends, not really caring for myself in terms of like showering, eating, like essentially neglecting myself. and it took a conversation with a very understanding GP who sat me down with my mum and said look at this point we're going to have to bring you into hospital if we don't sort things out and it was after that that and I think seeing how I was hurting my mum I decided something clicked and I went back to school sat my exam and I went into med school with a really big ambition and we learned nothing about nutrition.

6:34So when you say you went into med school with a big ambition, could you just tell me what was your ambition then? Well, I guess I didn't just want to learn about saving people's lives. I wanted to learn about preventing people from getting sick in the first place. So that's what happened with your dad comes into place. And when you first start working as a junior doctor, you rotate through various specialties and I just so happened to be I was working in a central London hospital and I was the rotations that I was given were quite acute medical so people who were very much very unwell so a lot of people would die and I remember just being completely shell-shocked by witnessing all of this because maybe a little bit naively it wasn't something I'd experienced in med school you know you go on you you do kind of work experience but you don't experience the sheer trauma um and so when I was in med school and I was realizing well I know how to treat people with pills and surgery but what happens if someone like dad walks into my office like what do I do there and so I set up this blog called the food medic 13 years ago now um a little wordpress blog where i would write about how nutrition and medicine are involved how we can prevent things like high cholesterol high blood pressure how they're linked to our kind of long-term health and it really just took off because at the time this would have been like 2012 2013 wellness on instagram was getting really big um you know lots of bloggers coming out but not many of them were really qualified to be giving advice and there was a lot of backlash going on so I think the fact that I just newly qualified as a doctor and things like that people were like I think I can trust her and I had someone come knocking for a book deal when I was writing my I was doing my medical school exams finals and it was Christmas time when I was home in Ireland I remember getting getting an email to say we'd love you to write a book um and that was my first book the food medic and it just really took off got it here yeah um I mean I remember all of this yeah this I've watched your career from the from the get-go yeah and I think you're right I think the fact that um it was called the food medic yeah and that you had a credential to your name when nobody really else did that was in that field I mean, I would like to touch on how hard it is to trust information online.

9:18What's your opinion of that? I think it's really tricky. In the beginning, I would do my best to do a lot of myth busting and things like that. And I'm not like the, I'm not a very confrontational person. So I don't like, and I don't agree with calling people out in line. I don't either. I just, I think, I know that some people, that's the way they approach things. It's negative, isn't it? It's so negative. And also, maybe they actually don't know the truth here. You know, maybe they're being misled or this is their truth. So I would always opt for like a private message over calling someone out.

9:57Have you done that? Yeah, plenty of times. And I've had people completely ignore me. And I've had people say, thank you so much for messaging. I didn't know that. or some people say well that's your opinion this is mine so interestingly I when I do it I don't do it as an expert because I don't know I don't know but I might say um like why don't you contact somebody that you know rather than putting that person down yes why don't you sort of say I've got a different opinion but like it's social media shouldn't be a battleground yeah or somewhere where you choose to try and take each other down because actually at the end of the day, we're all trying to do something positive.

10:39Yeah, that's it. And I think when we think about the state of healthcare and access to health information and trying to see your GP, a lot of people struggle to even get into a doctor's chair and so they turn to social media. And when I was writing my last book, Not Just a Period, we did a big survey through my social media and we had like 7 ,000 people, 7 ,000 women respond. Wow. Yeah. And at the end, I think we had almost 5 ,000 complete responses that we analysed. But from that survey, we found that most people turn to social media for health advice above their doctors, but it's not their preferred source.

11:20They're only going there because they don't feel like anyone's going to listen to them. so I think I believe social media can be really powerful for sharing information and I I think you don't have to be an expert to do that because people's lived experiences are really valuable um you know like I have a friend who has endometriosis and she set up a foundation endometriosis foundation and she's had such a terrible experience she's you know had multiple bowel surgeries because of it and like her voice is so valuable but she's not a doctor um but she has medical experts come in and do kind of live instagram posts and things like that and like how you have integrated even your surgeon recently i think that's really powerful um but we have we have to be really careful if we're pretending to be something that we're not yes you know and I think that's where the line can be a little bit blurry I'd like to go back a little bit and talk about the connection that that how strongly you feel about food and how that can help people because um you know obviously we're called begin again and you're quite interesting because you're helping women kind of look at their periods and start a new relationship with their bodies and how they can help themselves and be more in control yeah of their bodies but at the same time you sort of began again you you were studying medicine and went on afterwards to do nutrition yeah so I was 28 when I went to do my master's and that that's a lot that was it and that was my third degree um not that I'm counting or anything but that's quite impressive but that to to highlight how much I really wanted it because no one really wants to go back to university once you've actually gotten a job and someone's paying you to do what you're expert in and I was still working in the NHS at the time so I had to do it um kind of alongside that so you were you had a job in the NHS as a doctor yeah and then went back to do a master's while you were still working in the NHS yeah what what was that like for you It was really difficult.

13:38I mean, at the time I was doing locum work so I could choose my shifts, but that's what funded my master's. But once I started it, like day one, I was like, I'm meant to be here. Like, I'm meant to do this. Before, because there's so many things I want to, and I definitely want to talk about periods, but before we get there, I quickly wanted to ask you because so many friends of mine are talking about it and doing it and considering it, egg freezing. Yeah. What is your take on that? Because I know you've experienced it. You've gone through it yourself. How can people, when should people think about it?

14:20What does it feel like? What can they expect? And why is it a good idea? So I think, obviously, to freeze your eggs, you need to be in a financial position to do it. Unless you have a medical reason why your fertility might be impacted. I have a diagnosis of PCOS, which doesn't mean I'm infertile in any shape or form. Could you explain to people what PCOS is? Yeah, so it's called polycystic ovary syndrome. And you essentially have cysts on your ovaries, but it means that your cycle length is a bit longer. and you don't ovulate every month and there are some other symptoms impacted so the reason that you don't know when you're ovulating and sometimes your cycles are a bit more irregular it makes getting pregnant a bit more difficult so when I was diagnosed with this I thought well I'll get see how many eggs I've got left I'll check all of this and I was single at the time so I was thinking you know I'm 30 now I don't know what's going to happen in the next five years but I would like to have children with someone or without and they said you have very low ovarian reserve so you don't have many eggs for your age it doesn't tell you anything about the quality of your eggs was that a shock yeah because i i thought i'm so fit and healthy i'm in my 30s surely i've got a ton of eggs um and so i spoke to a fertility doctor and he basically said if you're thinking about freezing your eggs, it's do it now.

15:52So after the age of 35, your egg quality declines. So it doesn't really matter how many eggs you have, but the quality of them declines, so it can impact getting pregnant. So I froze my eggs age 32, I think it was. And actually I'd met someone then who I'm getting married to this year. Congratulations. Thank you. Oh, that's great news. Yes. So I met him while I was kind of exploring this and I told him what I was going to do because also even if we worked out, I wanted to make sure that I was looking after me and kind of what I wanted. And he was very supportive throughout the process. um so I think I was very naive going into it even as someone who's medically trained because I knew the ins and outs of the different hormones I'll be taking kind of what the regime would look like but I wasn't really clued up on how that would physically make me feel and I would say they said oh you might get some you'll get some bloating and things like that I couldn't fit into any of my pants by the end of it I was so bloated from all the hormones and when they scanned me the day before they took out the eggs there were the my ovaries were just full of all these follicles like so many like I think 30 on one side and 25 on the other so like the the amount of swelling was was to be expected but what I wasn't warned about was afterwards once you they retrieve the eggs you stop all your hormones you basically are in what my surgery what my fertility doctor explained to be like a mini menopause but they don't warn you about it so I was so low tearful like I went back to work straight away because they said oh you only need a day off work I couldn't do my work I was so so low my body was so painful it was painful to sit on the chair and I just was like I felt like I shouldn't feel that way.

17:55Why didn't they tell you if that is a common... I think, well, they said there'd be some discomfort, but there's just no warning about the mental impact. And I had friends who had done it, and some of them didn't have such a bad experience. Some of them had a worse experience. And I just think, like, of course you're going to feel the impact of pumping yourself full of hormones for, like, a few weeks. then having a procedure which isn't just a small procedure um and then if someone removes all those hormones you're gonna feel really low and i think also the emotional impact of just wow like those eggs are now in the freezer yeah um i think what's interesting um sometimes in the menopause sphere i use the term like medical gaslighting where they they don't tell you something that would really really help yes and then kind of go you're you're overreacting yeah it's like well if somebody told me this might happen then I wouldn't be feeling like this and I think interestingly the same with periods as it is with menopause all on our all the way along on our journey we get kind of told to stop overreacting yeah it's just a period that's it which is your book obviously um so i so just to finish off with your um egg freezing freezing like was it successful it was successful um i think the comparison like trap is just not one to get into and i think i i did share share my journey online but i didn't want to share about how many eggs i'd retrieved and things because i i feel like people start comparing and say well i got more or whatever and I was like well it is what it is good so I just kind of kept that part private but I wanted to share my experience of like going through the process because I wish I had that and I want I don't regret doing it I think was the best decision and I may never use them but I may have to use them because I've not got to that point yet and I would say if anyone's considering doing it it's better to do it sooner rather than later because your egg quality only declines over time but the The paradox is women are usually only at a point where they can A, have the time, A, have a partner if they want to have a partner to do it and also are financially able to do it when they're later in life.

20:21Yeah. So no one's thinking about it in their 20s, but that's probably the best time to do it. Yes. So I think, you know, you'll find with clinics, some of them don't have, you know, really tight age cut off. So it's worth having a little chat with someone if you're thinking about it and go around the clinics. there's so many fantastic ones in London but also around the UK um and it's it is becoming more affordable compared to how it used to be so yeah but then I you know every month I pay my little membership to keep my eggs on ice and I say that's my egg gym membership um yeah 18 euros a month to keep them there so yeah we'll see but I I do think if you are not ready to have kids before the age of 35 and you have the means to it is something worth exploring but as a first step I would just go get your fertility tested if you're serious about having kids does that cost money it does but that's a lot more affordable like you can get simple blood tests even the ones that are the finger prick testing and things like with fertility and they'll do it in the post and they'll just give you a brief snapshot.

21:33It doesn't tell you everything. But for me, it prompted me to freeze my eggs. So I think it's, what I think all of this is really important is that we are more informed about our bodies and our choices. I mean, this is what we haven't had. No. And this is what is so good about talking. Yeah. and what I like about you Hazel is that you are very inclusive it's not just about women talking to each other or um it's about involving men everybody get on board you know dads yeah um of daughters who are in their 20s or 30s it's about husbands or boyfriends or fiancés yeah of women it's about having a grown-up conversation I love the fact that you just met a guy yeah and you told him you were freezing your eggs and that he didn't run yeah that he's that guy who's like I totally understand why you're doing it that I might not be involved like let's just see how we go and you you carry on these are modern conversations yeah yeah actually when I was having the procedure and you're not in under general anesthetic it's like heavy sedation him and my mum were in the McDonald's next door having a little coffee waiting and that's where he asked my mum if he could marry me.

22:54While you were having your... I know. I know. He didn't tell me that until later. I was like, in McDonald's in Dublin. Is that so romantic? I know. But actually... Very sweet. It actually is. Yeah. Yeah. Experian is your big financial friend, helping you explore credit card offers with confidence. Some cards are labelled no ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. See Experian.com for details. Applying for cards labelled no ding decline and won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved. So you're writing The Female Factor, which is sort of part recipes.

23:30Yeah. So The Female Factor was like a bigger look on the, how we understudy, underdiagnose, and essentially neglect women when it comes to health and healthcare. And I was witnessing this within the hospital. And I would like to caveat this, but I don't think any doctors are intentionally gaslighting or neglecting women I think it's a reflection of the lack of research we have and then because we don't have the research majority of historically majority of the research we've done is on male bodies male mice male cells and we just assume that women are small men so it'll work the same um but we're not and so what was really interesting to me is I remember one situation in particular where I was working in the acute medical unit and in this unit GPs would refer patients in who they think are unwell but not super unwell that they need to be in A &E it's like they need some extra tests so this woman in her 50s had chest pain and it was query reflux but also roulette a heart attack and I went to see her and she was I remember her being very rushed because she had to pick up her grandkids so she was telling me to hurry up and I was like well everything looks fine your abs look fine but I need to do an ECG and I need to run these blood tests I'm ticking the boxes to make sure you're not having a heart attack and she was like I always get reflux when I'm stressed so she'd me convinced I let cardiology know just in case they were also like it's probably nothing came back she was having a heart attack and I think it was so interesting because I was like my bias was that she was just a stressed woman and also women don't have heart attacks men have heart attacks like we hold these biases about men and women when and then when I was writing the female factor I learned that um doctors have these biases about men and women but also women can present with heart attacks differently like yes if you have central crushing chest pain do go to hospital but sometimes women will feel a bit nauseous or they'll get more reflux type symptoms and if you're presenting with that you may slip through the net so it's really important that we listen to women who are experiencing those symptoms and don't dismiss it as you're just a bit anxious do do you think that that is the problem really is a an overall

26:07minimization of or it do women do it also to themselves so I am guilty of going no no no don't worry I'm fine I can do this because I've spent my whole life yeah as you have minimizing minimizing what we're going through whereas and I'm I have so many male allies my partner isn't the most amazing male ally like he wants to look after me he listens to me he so I I don't need to do that around him I can be honest yeah but it's it's like it's in my DNA or something as a woman to cope with everything. And I think partially that must be society, that we've evolved into these creatures that just need to be okay.

26:57You're completely right. And there's a lot of research coming out, and you might have come across this as well, because the British Heart Foundation have been publishing a lot on it, how women are more likely to die from a heart attack in the UK. And we've been trying to understand why, but there's so many different reasons to why that might be. And it's really like one of the big parts of it is that when we have symptoms, we're more likely to put it off, go in to seek help. That would be fine. It'll be fine. I'm too busy. I'll just take a painkiller. Look at this woman. She was trying to go and pick up her kids.

27:33Whereas if men are in pain, they will take it seriously. And if we see a man coming to the hospital, we think he must be serious. whereas women again not to say that we're gaslighting women in general but women are often seen as being a bit hysterical where did the word hysteria come from where did it come from basically it was a made-up condition saying that women had this hysterical illness and it manifested from the womb we were sick by our womb it's not a real thing so for years women when we're diagnosed with this made-up condition. So when we say that we're hysterical, that's where it's coming from.

28:14I know. I know. But I thought it was because I was really funny.

28:23You are hysterical in a funny way. That is unbelievable, right? It's unbelievable. And just to follow up on that, when it comes to pain, women's pain, we're taking that seriously. we're more likely to have our pain diagnosed as psychogenic which means it's not real and when women ask for painkillers this is backed by research we have to wait longer to get them so it's something to do with not being believed as a woman and there's no biological reason why we would make that up So I think my assumption is it's all just wrapped up in gender biases, that women are emotional. But it's entrenched. It's entrenched.

29:14In society. And healthcare. How do we stop it? With more research, more awareness. I mean, research. Can we just get angry about that for a minute? I know, I know. How long are we going to have to bang on about that? We have to keep banging on about it. because only 2.5 % of publicly funded research goes towards women's reproductive and gynecological health. And I think when I was writing this book, one of the stats that really jumped out at me is that, you know, 90 % of women who have a period experience premenstrual symptoms. But there's hardly any research done on that. There's five times more research done on erectile dysfunction.

30:00when that only impacts like 20 % of men or even less. It's really interesting. I mean, this is dark. Yeah. So we need, first of all, we need more people to care about it so that we get investment into it. But what I don't understand is about people caring about it. We are 51, maybe even 52 % of the world women. women so how come more like we are half have that why don't half the people care about it what's up with that i think because we've also been brainwashed into minimizing it as it's just a period or it's just the menopause or it's just pregnancy all women go through these things it's just part and parcel of being a woman you know so suck it up so suck it up yes i mean i think i I mean I'm very lucky everything in gynecologically for me has been relatively straightforward yeah um but um I was saying my my daughter yeah um has adenomyosis and it is only it is thanks to um a doctor on Instagram that I we looked into that and sort of started questioning a little bit more around her symptoms and things so she got an early diagnosis but women are waiting years and years yeah for diagnosis and it doesn't seem to be getting any better so not just a period what you were talking about PCOS yeah was that part of the drive to get out there and start talking about it yes yes so I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2018 and I knew something was wrong because my cycles were becoming more regular and I was experiencing acne that I haven't had in years and multiple other symptoms and even though I was a working doctor at the time in the NHS I had to really fight really really fight for two years to get my diagnosis and I finally got my ultrasound and blood tests which confirmed that I did have PCOS and it was so validating but also I was like what do I do now and the consultant turned around and he said well you're not overweight so um just cut the carbs and come back when you want to get pregnant and I was like this is the most useless piece of information and now I work in a clinic I have my own clinic and I work specifically with women most of them have PCOS and I consult them on nutrition and we're able to transform their cycles get their cycle length down help them ovulate help them get pregnant and this is just with food yeah I mean that's incredible right yeah and side note I don't tell them to come off medication some of them don't need medication I don't need medication luckily so I'm very much not this or that I'm very much this and that but how like if I had that information you know years ago I would have got to a place much quicker um and I just think again like the way it was so minimized and the way I had to fight for it so that really did inspire my book but off the back of writing The Female Factor I just my DMs were just full of women having really bad periods and just being told it's normal heavy periods painful periods painful periods where you're taking annual leave um using unpaid leave to take days off and then you know women who are unable to get pregnant women who have really long cycles lost their cycles because of stress and i think the the common narrative was just come back when you want to get pregnant it's normal it's just a period try the pill but not looking into what was actually going on and so I wanted to write a manual that was essentially like what's normal what's not what do I do when this goes wrong and also how can I live across my menstrual cycle what food should should I eat how does that impact exercise or sleep or my breast health or my libido or my mental health and I think like when I was writing the book and doing the research I was like feel so empowered were you learning things yourself that you hadn't known before absolutely and it just felt like oh I wasn't going crazy it wasn't just in my head and now I I'm really in tune with what I need at certain points of my cycle even my partner he knows what I need at certain points of my cycle we talk it openly about it um and I love with menstrual cycle tracking apps you can even share it with your partner so they know you know if you're ovulating if you're you know in that PMS phase if you're due your period and I think having that awareness is amazing wait that's so good sorry I feel quite old right now um but so because obviously I've not been tracking periods for a very long time yes and um I haven't been married for a very long time either but so and my husband always definitely knew when I had PMS but um so he he your partner not he like yeah man or woman but your partner would know when to brace themselves for the pms phase yeah that's so nice so good because they'd be able to offer you more understanding when you're struggling that's a brilliant idea isn't it yeah yeah and i think it's like it's having that awareness and one thing that does drive me a little bit mad is how we always assume it's women's hormones if they're upset so i think yeah that's true what i used to hate that as well yeah don't just assume that she's due her period or you're pms no you're just really annoying that's it yeah sometimes you're just really annoying yeah and and that's a conversation i've had to have my with my partner but some really interesting research i came across um when writing the book was around PMS and they took a group of women who experienced PMS and they put them in two groups one who had therapy and one who had couples therapy and they found that couples therapy was more effective at reducing symptoms of PMS because the women felt really supported yes and so what that really shouts to me is that it's not just hormones it's you know maybe decide that you're going to cook dinner this week or maybe just take the bins out and don't complain and just be a little bit more helpful during that time because it will make her experience of PMS so much more bearable.

36:57I mean as a woman I think having been your feelings your your experiences with your body being minimized all the time when you find a partner who hears you yeah sees you understands maybe just holds space for you yeah have a meltdown or gives you some space if you just need to cool down about something and you know that they're doing that they don't go oh I'm going to give you some space because you're clearly you know what I mean when you find somebody who gets you in that way yeah you do anything for that person I mean it's incredible isn't it yeah and I would say like in all honesty that with my current partner it didn't start like that when it came to talking about the menstrual cycle he grew up not really ever having that conversation and so when we started dating and he realized that all I do is talk about periods for work and you know I'm really passionate about it he was a bit like whoa just give me the need to know information and I was like I'm sorry this is my work you're gonna have to get used to it you're gonna not you can't be about it and now he knows so much about the menstrual cycle it's so normalized in our household um he's a health coach and I hear him speaking to his female clients you know maybe you're craving this because you're in your luteal phase and I'm like go David but I'm team David by the way I just want to let you know I'm so happy no because my partner did that with the menopause yeah but it he's a hairstylist i hear him all the time talking to women about menopausal hair yeah he's and he's learned that because he understands how important it is to you david that's it but the reason i wanted to highlight that is because sometimes women say i couldn't have that with my partner and i think it's worth having the conversation you never know and give them time because they also will have those entrenched beliefs that it's something that we don't talk about.

39:15You know when I got my period I remember my mum shooed me into a room, took one of my sisters in told her to tell me what to do and my dad didn't have a conversation with him but every month he would bring me a hot water bottle but he'd never mention anything. He'd just give me the hot water bottle in silence. I know.

39:35Oh I know. I know. Oh, love your dad. Very sweet. Wow, love a dad. What a man. What a man. Oh, sorry, how lovely is that? Yeah. I'm not going to say anything, but here's just a thing to let you know that I know. Yeah. And I think that just goes a long way. And I'm, you know, I'm not a dad. I don't know how they feel. David might be one day. It might be one day. And I think maybe some young girls will feel uncomfortable if their dad wants to have a really deep conversation about it. But if they do the little things, like make sure they have whatever products they need, add it to the weekly shop, give them a hot water bottle, make a nice dinner, get some Ben and Jerry's in the fridge.

40:29Like those little things just go a long way so that girls don't think like, I need to suffer in silence. Because if they know dad doesn't mind if I tell him that actually I'm being sick because I'm so unwell with my periods. Like I can't go to school, I'm missing PE. They won't feel like they have to suffer in silence. Yes. So whilst you were writing Not Just a Period, what were the big learnings? You know, could you give me three wow moments where you're like, okay, this is big? Yeah. I would say like big top line wow, which is what I want every woman to come away with, is the hormones that orchestrate our reproduction, so our menstrual cycle, our menopause, like oestrogen and progesterone, they are not just influencing when we have our periods.

41:14They influence everything from our brain health, our gut health, our mood, our sleep, what we crave, how strong we feel, how energetic we feel, how motivated we feel. So understanding that will give you so much insight into what your body needs. And that's regardless of where you're at. in your reproductive life so i think that's the really most important thing i think the second thing and we touched on that as well is it's not just hormones you know there's so many other things that influence how we feel and you know around just before the next period most women experience pms so emotional and psychological um but also physical symptoms so that could be anything from like breast tenderness cramping bloating but also feeling a bit more tearful feeling a bit angry and I think oftentimes we just pass it off as you know it's just PMS but for a very small percentage of women five to eight percent of women there's something called PMDD where it's really severe pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder and they get really depressed sometimes have suicidal thoughts and that's really poorly unrecognized and I know a lot of women experience it and are really struggling and I think if we can raise more awareness about that to listen to women if they are feeling really low especially if it's cyclical so if it's happening in those two weeks before your next period and it's happening every cycle that's something to look out for so it's different from from depression where it would be there all the time it's happening in that two week period I had a client who who was experiencing this and she would say I only at one good week a month and oftentimes we do our calls and she should be in bed because she was just feeling so low um and a lot of the work that we did was just making sure that she had healthy meals in the freezer for those really difficult weeks you know it was just getting her nourished and making sure she like she was doing well so I think we cannot underestimate underestimate the impact of our cycle and I guess third I would say there's a huge productivity loss because of the menstrual cycle but if I flip that on its head what about if we harness our hormones we understand what we need how much productivity could we gain like how how much are we holding ourselves back in our career or being held back in our career because we're not fully in tune with our cycles and I know it shouldn't be our responsibility to learn these things but unfortunately we're kind of at that stage until the rest of the world catches up so let's learn about how we can optimize our sleep around our cycle our nutrition our exercise our workouts so that we can show up better in the workplace so that we can you know achieve our goals have better relationships be open in our relationships and I think I I love that empowering message because I want women to learn about their cycles not just when something goes wrong but so they can have a better experience of their cycle.

44:20And so they can have a better life. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's empowering a woman to have, to lead a happier, more fulfilling, better life. Yeah. I can't think of a better thing to help women with than that. Yeah. Hazel, I just want to say, Dr. Hazel Pollock, thank you so much for talking to me today um good luck with your wedding thank you congratulations thank you um but thank you most of all for supporting so many of us i've loved following you you know i'm a long-time adopter um but particularly not just a period amazing for my girls amazing for mums all over the place and young women so thank you thank you so so much i i really enjoyed talking to hazel I think basically what was brilliant about it was that I had two different hats on.

45:19I had the hat on of being a mother and a parent, but also of being a woman and having gone through this journey. And once again, understanding how important allies are. We need everyone on board. I loved hearing about Hazel's husband. Let's big up, David. Yeah, it was a really informative and interesting and brilliant chat. Yeah, I loved it.