The Dr Louise Newson Podcast

This week on the podcast, Dr Louise is joined by Elin Sullivan, a young woman who suffered a myriad of symptoms for years before getting the right treatment. Elin first experienced recurring urinary tract infections at 19 years old, and twice required hospitalisation. She also suffered from sweats, sleep disruption and fatigue, shaking and lichen sclerosus. After a chance encounter with Louise, sh...

This week on the podcast Dr Louise is joined by Dr Felice Gersh, who is double board-certified in OB-GYN and Integrative Medicine, and specialises in female health, with a focus on managing female hormonal dysfunctions. She is the author of the book PCOS SOS: A Gynecologist’s Lifeline to Naturally Restore Your Rhythms, Hormones, and Happiness, and recently published a paper on oestrogen and cardio...

This week Dr Louise is joined by Aoife O’Sullivan, a family medicine doctor who trained in Dublin before completing a second family medicine residency at the University of Maryland.   After taking some time out to complete extra training in perimenopausal and menopausal care, including Newson Health’s Confidence in the Menopause course, Dr Aoife is passionate about providing more comprehensive and...

This week on the podcast Dr Louise is joined by a new colleague, Dr Louisa James, a psychiatrist who has recently joined the team at Newson Health. Dr Louisa’s personal experience of the menopause prompted her to learn more about the impact of hormones, and incorporate her knowledge in her role as an NHS consultant psychiatrist in a home treatment service. Here she discusses the importance, and po...

This week is a celebration of Dr Louise Newson’s new paperback book, a revised and updated version of the bestselling The Definitive Guide to the Perimenopause & Menopause. Dr Louise is joined by Kat Keogh, who worked on the book with her and is the head of editorial at Newson Health and across the balance website and app. Here Kat turns the tables and asks Dr Louise the questions, discovering...

This week on the podcast, Dr Louise is joined by Tova Gillespie, a working single parent to two daughters, one of whom has severe disabilities and complex medical needs. Here she talks about the challenges of being perimenopausal while being a carer and how it’s easy to not recognise or understand your symptoms.   Louise and Tova discuss how it’s easy for your own needs to end up at the bottom of...

This week on the podcast, journalist Bryony Gordon, bestselling author of several books including her latest, Mad Woman, explains how the perimenopause caused her to reconsider her mental health. Was her experience of OCD affected by her hormones and what would society look like if women’s health was taken more seriously? Bryony shares her belief that there’s a 'witchy magic' to menopause and that...

This week, Dr Louise is once again joined by journalist and activist Kate Muir, who made the Davina McCall documentary Sex, Myths and the Menopause. In Kate’s new book, Everything You Need to Know About the Pill (but were too afraid to ask), she turns her attention to the hormones commonly used in the contraceptive pill. Kate shares personal stories of how women have been negatively affected by sy...

This week we mark 250 episodes of the Dr Louise Newson Podcast! And joining Dr Louise this week is Anita Nicholson, a nurse practitioner and menopause expert at Age Management Center in the US, where she aims to help patients lead the best quality of life for as long as they can. Here, Dr Louise and Anita compare notes on the attitudes towards testosterone in the UK and the US, share their clinica...

In this week’s podcast Dr Louise is joined by Dr Mary Claire Haver, an obstetrics and gynaecology doctor and a menopause specialist in the US. Dr Louise and Dr Mary Claire discuss the challenges of ensuring all women have access to evidence-based information and treatment, and their hopes for change. Dr Mary Claire shares her three tips to help menopausal women improve their health: Really focus o...

The Dr Louise Newson Podcast is celebrating two huge milestones this week: not only is the podcast five years old, we’ve hit six million downloads since Dr Louise started her podcast back in March 2019! Making a welcome return to the podcast this week is world-renowned neuroscientist Dr Lisa Mosconi, PhD. Her new book, The Menopause Brain is released on 21 March and in it Dr Lisa shares some of th...

Joining Dr Louise on this week’s podcast is Alex Newman, a substance misuse therapist with a special interest in the menopause. Alex’s passion is supporting women who are self-medicating menopausal symptoms with alcohol and drugs – a recent survey by Newson Health of nearly 1,200 women found some were spending nearly £3,000 a year on alcohol and over-the-counter medication in a bid to cope with me...

Content advisory: this episode contains themes of suicide and self-harm Joining Dr Louise on this week’s podcast is Wendy Barker. Wendy experienced postnatal depression after the birth of her first child in the late 80s and was later diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a very severe form of premenstrual syndrome. ‘For probably three weeks of the month, I was like a coiled spring...

This week Dr Louise is joined by feminist cultural historian Dr Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women, which unpacks the roots of the misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women’s bodies, illness and pain. From the ‘wandering womb’ of ancient Greece to today’s shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the story of women who have suffered, chall...

On this week’s podcast, Dr Louise is joined by Dr Ashley Winter, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist, and Dr Sarah Glynne, a GP and menopause specialist who is a member of the research team at Newson Health and chairs a working party that promotes access to evidence-based menopause care for patients with breast cancer. They discuss Fezolinetant – brand name Veoza – a new drug recently appro...

In this episode, Dr Louise is joined by Dr Clair Crockett, a GP and menopause specialist at Newson Health. Dr Clair has completed diplomas in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and Sexual and Reproductive Health, and fits coils and implants. Here, she discusses some of the challenges for perimenopausal and menopausal women when it comes to contraception, and the importance of individualisation. She gives...

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, this week’s podcast looks at how menopause can affect sex and intimacy. Joining Dr Louise is US-based Dr Kelly Casperson, urologic surgeon, author, and sex educator with expertise in hormones and pelvic health, whose passion is empowering women to embrace their best love lives. They talk about how genitourinary symptoms, such as recurrent UTIs, can impa...

Advisory: this podcast includes themes of mental health and suicide. Do you find yourself easily distracted, with your attention rapidly shifting between different things? If so, you could be one of the legion of women who are under-diagnosed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Here, Australia-based psychiatrist and ADHD expert Dr David Chapman joins Dr Louise to discuss what ADHD...

On this week’s podcast Dr Louise is joined by Dr Rupy Aujla, founder of The Doctor’s Kitchen, which aims to inspire and educate about the joy of food and the medicinal effects of eating well. Dr Rupy shares his thoughts on how to best enjoy a healthy and fulfilling diet and looks at some of the challenges food can bring during the perimenopause and menopause, but also how it can be a time to rethi...

On this week’s podcast, Dr Louise is joined by Dr Peter Greenhouse, a menopause specialist with 40 years’ experience in women’s sexual healthcare who is actively involved in postgraduate lecturing. He has recently spoken out about NICE’s draft menopause guideline update, and tells Dr Louise it contains inappropriate and inaccurate statements, particularly concerning HRT and breast cancer safety, a...

This week Dr Louise is joined by Dr Hussain Al-Zubaidi, our brand-new fitness and longevity coach on the balance app. Dr Hussain is a GP who runs an NHS-based fitness and lifestyle clinic that helps patients to eat better, move more and connect with their community. Dr Hussain is a long-distance triathlete but he hasn’t always been fit – a shock medical appointment prompted him into action after y...

Menopause often happens at a time when you are juggling a career, relationships and caring responsibilities. Here Dr Nadira Awal, a GP and menopause specialist, joins Dr Louise to discuss her work in raising awareness of the menopause and the importance of partners and families understanding what their loved on is going through. Dr Nadira’s personal experience of the menopause helped drive her pas...

This week Dr Louise is joined by Dr Ruth Beesley, a GP who works in central Peterborough and who specialises in working with the homeless, those with alcohol or drug addictions and vulnerable women who engage in sex work. Dr Ruth talks about the challenges vulnerable groups of women face ­and how their trauma can act as a barrier to accessing the healthcare they need, both in general and for the m...

In this episode Dr Louise is joined by world-renowned neuroscientist Dr Lisa Mosconi, PhD. Dr Lisa is Director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic and Women’s Brain Initiative at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and author of bestsellers The XX Brain and Brain Food. Dr Lisa was studying nuclear medicine and neuroscience when her grandmother and her grandmother’s three sisters all developed Alzh...

Content advisory: this podcast contains themes of mental health and suicide. Dr Louise is joined by her patient Trudie Jennings in this episode to talk about the complexities around HRT during and after treatment for breast cancer. Trudie describes how she started HRT to successfully manage crippling anxiety and other menopause symptoms and a few months later she was diagnosed with an aggressive b...