would, would do you justice like [laughs] you could do yourself justice.

Oh, don't worry, I won't make it too long.

Um, well, first of all, thanks for inviting me.

And so I'm Dr. Nicki Key, as you said, and I'm a medical doctor.

And, uh, my passion and interest is in hormones because they are, um...

Basically, lots of people don't realize they are literally our powerhouses.

And those are the things, hormones are the things we, you know, uh, rely on to drive, you know, improvements in our running and all, uh, or whatever activities we do.

Yeah.

What is that showing up?

Well, like you say, it takes a lot of energy and effort, as it were, for the hormones to do their dance during the menstrual cycle.

And so if you're not having your free monthly medical check, it's not occurring, i.e. your period's stopped, and you're not pregnant.

Obviously, when you're pregnant, you're not having periods, so that's to be expected.

But if your periods stop during the menstruating years, when otherwise you would expect to be having a period, then that's that little... indicator that little flag saying hey uh you know uh the hormones aren't so happy doing their dance something has gone wrong here what's what's going on so um so first of all don't ignore it Of course, we can all have the from time to time, a period or a cycle can be a little bit irregular.

It might, you know, so skipping one, it's like, oh, what happened there? You know, that's not a cause for a panic or concern.

But however, the definition of what we call amenorrhea, lack of periods, is three consecutive periods missed.

And then I guess when you look at periods and period health a huge thing is contraception so the pill if we focus in on that suppressing the hormones a lot of the time not actually enabling periods to happen monthly and then athletes commonly will have it you know a lot of people will have it people will be on it for years and maybe come off it and then a lot of the time well it'll take a very long time for actually the periods to return so talk to me about your views on the contraceptive pill and what it is actually doing to our hormones and prevention of the monthly cycle

right?

But it's maintained effectively because of the high level of Listerodial, Mathemostatiform, Listerine, Progesterone from the placenta.

So that's a big change.

Also, you know, if you've been pregnant, you know you have to do that horrible glucose tolerance test.

You have to drink the thing of Lucozade.

I don't know if they changed it.

Anyway, I don't normally drink Lucozade.

Like when you're pregnant in that sense with hormones?