005 - The UpLift Podcast: Navigating Your Hormones: Perimenopause, Identity & Thriving in Your Mid-30s and Beyond with Adele Johnston.

Navigating Your Hormones: Perimenopause, Identity & Thriving in Your Mid-30s and Beyond

Hosted by Scarlett | Guest: Adele Johnston MSc, The Menopause Coach

In this deeply personal and empowering conversation, Scarlett sits down with her now mentor Adele Johnston — one of the UKs leading menopause experts to explore what really happens to women's bodies and minds from their mid-30s and beyond.

Adele opens up about her own story: from corporate high-flyer and competitive bodybuilder to experiencing early perimenopause that nearly cost her everything — her marriage, her career, and her sense of self. It's a story of unravelling and rebuilding, and the spark that led her to create The Menopause Coach.

This episode is for every woman who has felt unlike herself and couldn't quite put her finger on why. Whether you're in your 30s noticing subtle shifts, or further along your hormonal journey, this conversation offers clarity, compassion and a fresh perspective on what it means to thrive.

In this episode we cover:

• Adele's personal journey through early perimenopause — and what she wishes she'd known
• The signs and symptoms that are often missed or misdiagnosed in women in their mid-30s
• How hormonal changes affect mood, identity, relationships and confidence
• Practical, evidence-based strategies to support your hormones through nutrition, mindset and lifestyle
• The powerful role of positive psychology and breathwork in hormonal transitions
• Why the conversation around menopause needs to go mainstream — in homes and workplaces alike
• How to turn this life stage into one of growth, vitality and renewed purpose

About Adele Johnston MSc

Adele Johnston is a world-leading, award-winning menopause expert and psychologist, certified in positive psychology and nutrition. Based in Scotland and operating globally, she specialises in supporting women through perimenopause and menopause — and has made it her mission to make menopause mainstream.

A former bodybuilder, busy mum to twin girls and corporate high-flyer, Adele experienced early perimenopause in her mid-30s that nearly destroyed her marriage and sense of self — ultimately leading her to walk away from a role paying over £100,000 in salary and benefits due to a complete lack of support. From that experience, The Menopause Coach was born.

Find out more at adelejohnstoncoaching.com

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, guys, and welcome back to the Uplift Podcast with your host, Scarlet Portuguese. Today I am joined by another fantastic guest. We are talking all things menopause, her menopause today with Adele Johnston. She is a mentor for women's health and all things menopause for you to be able to build confidence. So I'm going to pass you over to Adele now, and she's going to give you a little bit more in-depth into who she is, what she does, and then we'll get stuck in to the episode. So welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Thank you, and thank you for having me. I um I always love talking about women's health and empowerment, and menopause is a big part of that. So if this is the first time that we're meeting, then I am Adele Johnston, known as the Menopause Coach, and have a big menopause coaching academy where I help coach other mentors, coaches in the space, PTs, health professionals. We do some work with the NHS and in dentistry and just help everyone get their menopause education. I have an international podcast myself, the Menopause Coach. So you can find us on all the major platforms, including YouTube now. And yeah, I'm sure we'll go into this, but my background is very much in women's health, menopause, and specialising in the field of psychology. I have a master's in psychology and I'm an active researcher in menopause, women's health and psychology at Sterling University. So we're currently working on some papers at the minute to get them published, which is really awesome. So here to answer all the questions and to just really support those in the field of women's health and menopause as best I can with the knowledge I've got so that we can make menopause more mainstream in the conversations that we have.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Amazing. So what what is your story, Adele? So what brought you to this work?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

So my story kind of begins. I was uh yeah, I would say very masculine energy, right? I was the woman in the corporate roles, I was in very much the the male-dominated environments, and I was climbing that career ladder, and then I started not feeling great. I was 33. By 35, I knew that something really wrong was happening inside my body hormonal, and it took until it was 37 before private and NHS appointments over two years of invasive um research and investigations that were done on me came about to confirm that I had very early menopause. So um I know that the the world of competing and everything is is going to feel really familiar to you. But I was a double gold Scottish champion in bikini, and we don't know whether or not that actually had a role to play in my early menopause confirmation. Um we can talk a little bit about this as well, but obviously we don't have the research or data to show that that type of stress on the body could have caused it, but we do know that elevated and chronic levels of stress over prolonged periods of time can absolutely result in triggering it's like the epigenetics and the lifestyle. So potentially my epigenetics and my DNA and genetics were already predisposed to the possibility of early menopause. Um my mum hadn't been through it, my gran hadn't been through it, but there's a possibility that having put my body through such a period of stress over a long time could have exasperated the symptoms. So yeah, that was kind of the start of my story, and after all of that, it became really difficult for me to stay within my corporate career. I resigned, I became one of the one million women that have resigned from their career because of menopause, and all the hours that I was putting into my senior management role in corporate. I started reading research, I became the menopause coach for myself because when I took to the good old Google before AI days, I was really trying to figure out what was going on with me and how to help myself. There was no such thing as a menopause coach. So I became who I needed to be for me and naturally started to share that with the world of social media. And as we say, questions came in, DMs got busy, and the business, it's kind of like an accidental but on purpose business that I built scaled from a startup to the first six figures in 10 months, and became something that I then felt very huge responsibility around helping others heal their own journeys at all ages. So yeah, it's kind of like that's the summarized version of what took me from there to here, and I now have a global and international business with an academy of education in women's health and menopause care, um, and really yeah, making a huge impact in the space, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Would you say that obviously coming from corporate and having that stress environment and competing, do you think that that was obviously a big driver into change? But obviously, running such a big business, how do you now manage stress in a different way?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Oh, do you know that's such a good question? So being in corporate, I I greatly look back and I look at how potentially, as a really young woman, a teenager, I was very chronically stressed. So, again, we talk about how lifestyle plays a role on this. Um, I came from a family dynamic where I had to grow up very quickly. So my parents divorced when I was 12. It wasn't really a thing back then that that even happened. I remember being bullied at school because of it. And I had a younger brother, so I became a caregiver to him whilst mum and dad were out at work and they were divorcing. So I think that played a bit of a role in the foundations of the change and the stress response. It was that kind of cognitive and emotional load that I then held as a teenager became quite heavy quite quickly. Then put on top of all of that the corporate life. You know, I was a mum to twins, working full-time in a senior leadership role. Yeah, it was it was quite intense. I wanted it all, right? It was like I want the family, but I also want the career, and why can I not have it all? And it is kind of like I call it the woman behind the smile, where we will show up, yeah, makeup done, high heels on, lipstick on, and we're smiling. But deep inside, we're just like, This is this is not working for me, like this is not me. So yeah, it's quite it was quite intense. Um you give me two seconds? Um apologies, you might have to just edit this part out. I'm gonna I have a Bengal, and she's very vocal, and I've just heard her come down the stairs, so I'm gonna go move her so she doesn't meow, because I don't know if you're picking that up on the mic.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I can't hear it, but I'll pause it for you.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Okay. So actually, fast forward that into owning my own business, and actually the stresses are different, they're still there, but it's actually way less. I have more space and life currency for myself than I ever had. So I would say that yes, there are still obviously stressful times and impacts. Um, when you're managing other people, it's always a bit of a an impact as well. But I would say no, now my stress levels are probably the lowest that they've ever been in my life, and that that says something, right? Because it's also part of bringing the the passion and my purpose into what I do.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yeah. So for people who don't really know the changes that happen through through menopause, perimenopause, etc., um, what would you say are the main things to look out for or like start to look out for when you are feeling more fatigued or you do live a very stressed lifestyle? Because obviously we've got people listening here who were parents like high in their careers, um, etc. Um you know, and and want to be able to pursue goals like transforming their bodies or compete in strength sports, or you know, just have something that isn't just their their work or family life. But if they're starting to go through these changes, what can they really look for and and start to pay attention to if if they don't know anything about it? Because obviously we don't get a manual for this, do we? We just you know it comes and then we've got to deal with it. So yeah, for for someone who has been through it, what would you say would be the core things to look for?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, okay, so yeah, I think this is like it's such a a really it's a really poignant question because we never really get through it. I think this is the the misconception. I hear a lot of women say, Oh, you know, I'm through that menopause thing, or I skipped it. And if we take this right back to the basics, every single woman, yeah, and female, so born female at birth with female reproductive organs, whether they have been surgically removed or not, it's when we're born with female reproductive organs, will go into and navigate their own menopause transition and journey. And everyone's journey is different. So we don't know at what age that's going to start happening, and perimenopause being that window where the hormones start to change. So if we think about for our male counterparts, they have a very linear hormonal shift with resets every 24 hours, right? They wake up and men have a spike of testosterone, they have a really solid day of testosterone, you know, heightened release, and then that gradually starts to decline throughout the day, they go to sleep, it resets and it starts again. But for women, we are very cyclical, so we don't have a linear process in that. And because we're navigating a 28-day-ish window of cyclical hormonal change, and everyone's journey is slightly different. When we enter into perimenopause, that's where we start to see changes in the likes of estradiol, which is one part of our estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and those ratios that we've had in the body pre-menopausal start to drop, they start to decline. And unlike men through the 24-hour window of that linear drop, women's decline in hormones isn't, we can't predict it. So for one woman, she might have a really slow, gradual drop in those hormones. And for someone else, it could be quite drastic, where it's almost like if you draw out one of these roller coasters, you're just like, wow, like that was a huge drop in your estrogen and and your testosterone. Um, progesterone tends to be a little bit more um stable as it reduces over the course of, but that could be up to a 10-year window. So for a lot of women, we have this false narrative right now where menopause is in your 50s and 60s, and whilst that's not incorrect, that stage is post-menopause. There's a whole part of that journey that happens before we become post-menopausal, and actually, it's in that perimenopause window of around 10 years that a lot of women are experiencing changes, and it's it's biopsychosocial. So the biology changes, the psychology changes, and that physiology of the body changes, yeah. And for many women, some of the early signs, and this can differ for everyone. So I always say, you know, just really get clear on what your body's telling you and communicating to you. But it's head to toe. So for a lot of women, it can start with maybe they've never experienced headaches or migraine attack before, maybe they've never had anxiety before, you know, and we have flare-ups of just feeling a little bit anxious and actually overwhelmed quite easily, brain fog or forgetfulness. We might have physical things like hair loss, so hair thinning, and it tends to happen around the outer parts of the hair, the hairline. And for a lot of women it's alarming because you're in the shower, you're doing your daily cares, and all of a sudden there's clumps of your hair coming out in your hands as you're washing your hair. Yeah, and you're thinking, wow, that's a lot. Yeah, it's not just a normal amount of a small ball of hair. You've got like a pamful of hair each time you wash. Eyesight changes. So where we've maybe always had great vision, you might notice that actually your nighttime vision is a bit poorer. When you're driving at night, you think you're struggling a little bit to read signs, or you get the halo effect around light. You've maybe never had that before. Heart palpitations. I mean, the list goes on, right? This is like head to toe. And for some women, it can be periods or menstrual cycle changes. And that can be the first indication. A longer cycle, a shorter cycle, heavier flow, lighter flow, painful in between. It's anything whenever I'm speaking to any woman about this, it's about what is a change for you. Yeah. And recognizing is that something new? Has that maybe been happening every month for a while? But if it's different for you, it's a change. So we simply just need to track those changes and recognize are they happening in a very cyclical fashion? And actually at the same part of your cycle each month, you're recognizing these symptoms are happening, or are they quite sporadic and they're happening some months and not next? So it's anything that is a change. One of the very early signs for myself was actually a lot of my symptoms were vaginal. And I'm very open and honest when I tell the story. But I found that for me, I was starting to get very uncomfortable. So even wearing underwear became a bit of a problem. I just found that I started to think, oh, I'm just really uncomfortable. You know, I couldn't wear jeans because the denim and the like the hardness of the material really started to cause a bit of friction and soreness on my vulva area. I then recognised that if I went to the bathroom, whenever I wiped, it felt like I was using sandpaper, regardless of how soft that tissue was, right? It's like you went for the softest of the plushest toilet roll. It was like sandpaper. And then when it came to like sexual contact or any sexual activity with my husband, it was painful. I didn't enjoy it. I would bleed quite heavily during and after sex, and it became very obvious to me that actually there was something not quite right. That was my very early indicator in my early 30s.

unknown 15:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

And that's why I then went to start seeking some medical attention because it was what we would call unexplained bleeding, and we always need to investigate that vaginally or anal.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah. So, with that being said, when that all of that was happening, how did that sort of make you feel in terms of your your confidence in yourself and your body image? Because I'm guessing when there's them hormonal shifts, you know, we see what happens every month when we're, you know, coming up to to cycle, you know, how that makes us feel in in our bodies if that's happening like more regularly. How does that sort of make you feel within your your body image and what did you do about it sort of as it was happening?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah, so for me and for many women, our body composition does change a lot in menopause. And uh the the kind of challenge with this is we've still got a very um unfortunate narrative, is what I would probably say, from especially the fitness industry of it being about the calorie and an energy balance, right? Calories in, calories out, you just need to eat less and move more, and you'll lose the weight. But that's not what happens when we are in our perimenopause transition, because actually, there is so much more going on than it just been about energy.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

So when we look at the changes, a lot of women can start to recognise that maybe where they've held body fat starts to change, and that can have a big impact on how we then view ourselves and how we view our body composition, and directly equals confidence. So I found that I was needing to change the types of clothing that I would wear and you know, dress differently. The things that I would have loved wearing pre-menopause just looked horrific on me when I was navigating this. I held a lot more belly fat and actually fell in love with my legs for once in my life. I never used to love my legs because I held a lot of um like I suppose excess fat around where my knee area was, which can happen for a lot of women. And when I started navigating menopause, that changed, and my legs actually really defined and went. I loved them. I was like, great, I'm gonna wear shorts again. But it was almost like that fat went, we're just gonna go from your legs and sit on your belly. So when I'd never had belly fat before, I then had this little pouch that would sit around my tummy no matter what I did, it would always be there. Um, and again, there's reasons for this, yeah, and we know why it happens within reason. We don't know exactly why some women have that and others don't. But the confidence that we can then have is not just about the physical impacts and changes on the body, and it's nothing to fear, it's actually the the psychological impact of change as well. So the brain has estrogen receptors all around it, the whole body does, every part of you, including your skin. And as estrogen levels are lowering, I like to explain it as do you remember the the video game Pac-Man? Yeah. You've got the little kind of eating heads that would like go around. It's like you've got all of them around your body, and they're kind of scooping up and eating up all the estrogen to then take that, it feeds them, and they go do the things around the body, like keep the heart healthy, the muscles healthy, the bones healthy. And as that food source for them, that estrogen or estradiol in particular starts to drop and decline, we're in a state where the brain is almost going, Oh, wait a minute, right, I've not got what I need to make this frontal lobe, this executive function, like keep time well and multitask well, and do all these things that we've done before. So we might find that we're forgetting things. Yeah, I would I would forget. I mean, I was a senior leader in my corporate role. I would forget I had meetings and not show up to them.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah. I would forget what actions I'd given my team members, and then they would follow up with me and say, Oh, but you said you were going to take that on, and I'd be like, Did I? And it never got done. Yeah. And it's like actually that has a massive impact on confidence, whether it's in your career or it's in your own life, when you're not truly functioning at how you used to. So that whole perception of low self-esteem can become an issue. That imposter syndrome can become really challenging when the brain is going through a decline in one of its main sources, the hormone source of estrogen.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

So, what kind of things would you do whilst this is happening to be able to flip the mindset within confidence? So, you know, instead of seeing change as a negative thing, like like you said, you know, you started to enjoy the look of your legs over the fact that you're gaining a little bit more but like body fat around your stomach. Um how would you kind of think about this in a in a way to build confidence like within your like your inner critic if you're trying to build this within yourself as a as a woman going through these changes?

SPEAKER_01 21:05

It's not as easy. I was talking to someone else about this today. It's not as easy as just doing a reframe. So reframes are a tool in the toolbox that we teach our coaches when we educate them in the positive psychology perma V framework. It's not that we can just switch it and go, Oh, of course I'm not that, or of course I shouldn't feel this. It's actually it's deeper than that, and it's continuous personal inner work. So this is where we can show up, and even doing something like I found, but this is very evidence based and proven, gratitude practices became huge. We actually rewire the synapses in the brain, like this part of it, that neuroscience, is huge. And being a psychology master, like this is a big, huge part of what I teach and what I do for a reason. It's not just because it's cool. Right, and it's like, ooh, neuroscience, that sounds cool. It's like, no, your brain can actually rewire synapses and connections. We know in menopause, it's actually just been a paper published on this earlier this month, that menopause changes the brain's grey matter and white matter. So with grey matter, it actually declines the energy. But the brain learns how to then create new neural pathways and it starts to expand in its white matter. So it's like it's always, it's always learning, it's plastic, it's always moving and changing. So for us, if we can then give ourselves a bit of a helping hand, and I look at it as this the first 40 years of your life, if you're going to live to an average age of, say, that 83, 84 as a woman in the UK, give or take, right? When you get into your 40th year of birth, you've lived a life. You've now got another life ahead of you. And what we're then doing is we're relearning the body that we're in, because it's not the same body that we were birthed through that when we were in our teenage years, our 20s and our 30s. We're adapting and changing. We're not meant to stay the same. So actually, when you hit that 40th milestone, it's like, right, now I've got a whole other life ahead of me. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do? And rather than just allow life to be there and just show up and take over each day, it's like you get to actually have the control and decide. So a daily gratitude practice. Affirmations also fantastic. It doesn't have to be the whole buzzword of the I am affirmation. Yeah. It also gets to be a how you speak to yourself, both out loud and internally, is important. Because if you are constantly berating yourself and telling yourself you're not good enough, then you're never going to feel good enough because no one else is going to show up on a daily basis to just be like, Hey Scarlett, I just thought I'd phone you today every day and tell you how amazing you are, and you've got this, and of course you can do that, and you're so capable. Yeah, it'd be amazing if we had that, right? But actually, the reality is the first voice that you hear on every single day when you're waking up is your own.

unknown 24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I think as well, I don't know if you have this opinion, but when women get to a certain age, they very much live in that kind of fixed mindset where they think that because they've been, you know, the the mother or they're at a certain point in their career that that's just them, and you know, because they haven't done it yet, then they won't be able to change. Do you do you I speak to a lot of people the same?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Um, I know what you're talking about. I completely can, I can resonate and I can see that. However, here's a really exciting thing: menopause changes that. So, again, there's a whole reason behind this. It's not just because all of a sudden we're just like, oh, I don't care about this anymore. It actually gives women this whole realization moment that actually they've given themselves to others, they've done the appeasement. Yeah. Interestingly, so much awareness around appeasement that the majority of the world's autoimmune conditions, over 80% of them, are in women. And that sparked a big question of why, like why women? And a lot of the time it's because of the emotional loads that we hold from appeasing others and doing things for others before our own wants and needs. So when we look at it that way, what happens is one big part of this, when again, I'm going to come back to that hormone estrogen because it's so bloody powerful for us as women, but when that hormone declines throughout menopause, what happens is we reach a point where we've kind of we've still got empathy and compassion, but we aren't willing to continue to be the appeasing person. So there becomes a point in a woman, and I love when this happens, okay, and they show up on calls with me and they're like, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not being there for everyone else, I'm not doing all the things for everyone. This is my life now, and I'm like, Yes, this is it, right? So it actually starts to become that second stage of life where women find themselves, and that is the most exciting part of menopause.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Yeah, and with within that, then because I I've I've seen this happen within people and a lot of clients that say come to me for for coaching, of like you know, strength training or you know, transformation, they're like, you know, the kids have left home, it's my time now, and you know, they they're starting to work on that. Um but then within the confidence building in that side, um how would how would you suggest that they that they do start to take that time back for themselves? You know, so for because it's yes, they can start to think that way, but how do you start to implement it?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah, well, it begins with them recognizing it first, right? And it's that feeling. So it always comes back to an emotion or a feeling that are anchors that and connects it back to them. So again, that whole feeling of like if they are empty nesting and they're no longer needed to be the mum to the teen teenagers or the young babies anymore, and actually they have adult children, for them it can be the recognition that actually, okay, I've got more time for me now. And it's a it's a beautiful phase, it's like a another era, yeah, within our life. The main thing in all of this is the recognition first, so it's realizing that actually you want that for yourself, and some people don't, and we can't force it. There's no right or wrong to this. The second part in it is actually deciding to make the changes, so it's deciding on where this would probably blow your mind, but a lot of women that I still work with one-to-one on their menopause care don't understand even when I ask them what are your top three to five values in life? Yeah, what do you value as a human, as a woman, for yourself? And it's not that it's there to catch anyone out, but it becomes almost a oh, I don't know, I've never done that, I have never thought about it. Yeah, very rarely will someone be like, number one, number two, number three. It's very much a, yeah, I don't know, I've not really thought about it. So we've found ourselves inside a world, inside a life where we've not wasted it, we've just been there and we've maybe locked into being a mum for decades. Yeah, or we've locked into other things that have taken up our energy and our attention and our focus, and we've forgotten. Yeah, I'm sure when you speak with your clients and you say, like, what do you enjoy doing? What's your hobbies? And they're kind of like, Oh, I don't really have any. Like, I used to like doing this thing, or I used to do this. But it's about really relearning ourselves again and allowing the the first thing that I will always do is ask, okay, so what did you love to do when you were younger? Think back to like your teenage years before life got lifing. What did you love to do? And if they're quite creative, they say, Oh, I used to love R, or I used to love like you know, going and getting flowers out of the garden and making my own perfume, like little potions. It's like, right, they're quite creative and they like to do things. So let's bring some of that back in. And with a lot of the ladies that I support, I support more women that require quite um detailed support. So more in psychology, neurodivergency. A lot of ladies are not diagnosed with neurodiverse minds until they start working with me, and it's like actually there's a lot of traits and signs here that we should explore. So one of those things could be if you are someone who loves being creative, is just get creative again. Buy a paint by numbers and start there. Yeah. See what starts to come back to you in terms of what you like.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Do you think people don't give themselves enough time with it as well when they're going through it?

SPEAKER_01 30:26

With menopause.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Just in in general, about sort of finding that spark again, or or when they start to change and and find themselves. I think with obviously the the Russian demands of life in general. Do you think people don't give it enough time? Then they're like, oh, it's not working.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Um yeah, yes, I can see that it does take a change, doesn't it? So we're unlearning. We're unlearning a life that we've already been living, where actually sometimes for the majority of women, they've never really m um they've never really mastered boundaries. Yeah. So boundaries are one of the biggest things where we can protect our energy and our life currency, or we can have it taken. Sometimes we give it away and we don't want to to someone else. So it's boundaries, it's communication, it's the art of communicating that back into the household now that actually I'm not available. So in my house, here's a really good example. I've I've always been known as the boundary queen for as long as I can remember. We have a running joke about it in my my company, yeah, because I've got really strict, strong boundaries to protect my own energy. So, as part of that, my household know that when I first wake up on a Fridays are my days. Okay, it's like the team, it's like don't contact me unless it's like an absolute disaster. Yeah, it's like it can wait. And I wake up on a a Friday morning, my husband deals with getting the kids out to school, he feeds the cat, he does the things. Because Fridays are my mornings, they're my days where I like to be slow, I like to have my coffee and my pajamas, I like to jump on AI now, and it used to be that I'd read a chapter of a book. Now I jump on AI and I put in my prompt, which is all written out about tell it like tell me what new research, tell me what new studies have just been published in women's health or menopause. And if I've got a particular area that I'm fascinated in, I'll be like, especially in this, or what's being discussed, and I spend some time just drinking coffee and reading that.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

But the kids know, although my office door will be open, like mum's there, but she's not there to do anything for us this morning, it's her day. And that's not selfish, because it teaches the household the same level of respect that they can then mirror and mimic.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah. I love that. Um, so obviously, like education is something which is very important to you and and myself as well when it comes to learning about these things. Um, would you suggest that women do have a little bit of a deeper dive into it and understand what is going on and or have more of a support from like coaching side of things as well?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yeah, I yes, there's so much more available now. When I think about when you know I first had that phone call from my own GP, I was in the primary school car park waiting to pick up my twins and picked up the phone to the doctors, and I just kind of thought, right, here we go. Like this has been two years of conversations, constantly getting these calls. And eventually then it was a yes, we agree with you, it is early menopause. But the doctor then at that point saying, I don't know how to really help you from here because I'm not trained in menopause, we've got to understand that we have this misconception that we can make a doctor's appointment and get the help we need. But the harsh reality is that it's a postcode lottery, not just even in the UK, around the world, where unless that general practitioner has invested privately themselves, nine times out of ten, in both time and money, they will not be trained in menopause. They may have a little bit of knowledge through an hour's worth of this is what menopause is, at that, at the very most, but they are not trained in it to understand enough to be able to take you through to a solution for you. And not everyone is the same. So a short answer for that is yes, of course, it benefits every single human being to be knowledgeable on these types of things because it's not a if it happens, it's a when it happens. Every single woman, a hundred percent of females in this UK, will go into menopause and the journeys will be entirely different from one woman to the next. You may need a hysterectomy for medical reasons, that journey is going to be different to someone who navigates it in a natural fashion. Yeah, so it's it's appreciating that there's lots of nuances to this, but it doesn't need to be scary, and when you are knowledgeable, you remove fear, okay, and you can spearhead your own support and care, and that's exactly what I advocate. Yeah, it's about you can go into your GP appointment and actually blow them away with how much knowledge you have just by even listening to one or two of my podcasts on the episodes because we covered it. So this is actually, yes, it's not as difficult as it needs, you know, you're not going to go to university and study for four years, but one of the things that I say that triggers a lot of women is you have a responsibility to your own self if you truly value yourself and your health. Because this is your body, it's no one else's responsibility to keep well, it's your body, yeah. And it's actually the decisions you make, the lifestyle you lead will play a role in how your genetics respond. Yeah, you've all heard that terminology used, right? Epigenetics is you lifestyle, yeah. It's like epigenetics is the gun, the loaded gun, and the lifestyle you lead is the trigger being pulled. So when we understand what it is, how we can help ourselves, um, we all get that full autonomy and empowerment and how we want to then manage our own health. It's not up to your GP to tell you what to do, it's your body. So that may trigger some people hearing that.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yeah, I love it. And um if anybody wants to dive deeper into it, you have your your podcast which has got a lot of episodes, um, a lot of information, some fantastic guests on there for yourself. So I will put in the link to to your podcast, The Menopause Coach, in the show notes for this as well. Um, because I think it'll just be fantastic for my listeners to to listen to that as well. Um where can people sort of find and connect with you apart from the podcast adult?

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Um yeah, I mean we're just about to release our 200th episode, which is amazing. We'll definitely need to celebrate that. Um, yeah, so I am super active in most places, so whichever platform you're on, I'm probably more active on Instagram. And if you are a coach, that is definitely the place to come and connect with me. If you are a woman listening to this and just wanting to learn more for you, then again, Instagram, the podcast, and TikTok is probably where you need to be. And you can find me there if you just search Adele Johnston or the dot menopausecoach, and I will come up on Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Amazing. Thank you so much, Adele, and thank you everyone for listening. Um, it's been a fantastic, fantastic episode, and I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Thank you for having me.