Perimenopause gets blamed for everything these days, but is there something hormonal that affects our feet?

Yeah, 100%.

When we get to perimenopause, menopause, obviously with the estrogen dropping, we are then looking at the tendons and ligaments do stiffen.

So when we've gone from flexible when we've had the babies to suddenly stiffening, that is a problem.

And we know that over a certain age, your muscle does drop off as well, your bone density.

So all these things coming together do... mean that we may get more foot injuries so if if the area is stiffening then um like our muscle has deconditioned then because our foot is loading all the weight the load has to go somewhere so it tends to go to like the the tendons like the plantar fascia your post-tip tendon um and with your foot changed over time there can be loading different places as well so all of that coming together does tend to lead to more foot pain um then you know um with all the other um sort of side effects that you have there can be more pain and things like that so i do tend to see it it can be sort of quite complex but just trying to you you know, educate the patient on what changes may have occurred, then they may tell me, oh yeah, that's how I feel.

And then we try to gradually build up.

So