Brain fog, hormones & the changing conversation around women’s health

What keeps you fascinated about this area today? I

think it's still really early in the research.

So while obviously menopause is not a new thing, it's always happened.

The research is still quite early in the development phase.

So we're still characterizing what the symptoms are.

We're still trying to understand what causes different symptoms.

And for some of the more brain-based mental health cognitive symptoms, we're also just at the very early stages of developing different strategies for management, for treatment, for sort of optimizing brain health.

But the other thing that really keeps me engaged and passionate about this is thinking about preventative health and dementia prevention.

I feel like some midlife is this perfect opportunity where our brains are vulnerable but it's also this opportunity to really build brain health and think about okay what can we do just to not get rid of the brain fog but also think about longer-term brain health it's just you know perfect chance to think about some of the lifestyle things that can be done.

That's a very interesting point.

Are you essentially saying that taking, so women going through perimenopause and experiencing brain fog, it's an opportunity for them to start thinking about their mental health long before dementia becomes an issue?

Yes, exactly.

And really, dementia is such a slow onset neurodegenerative process.

The prodrome, the period prior to symptom onset is maybe 10 to 20 years.

And so if the average age of onset is sort of 65 plus 70, like the early, early stages are midlife or around the years following midlife.

So it is timeline-wise the perfect opportunity to And yeah, in terms of people presenting and being concerned about their cognition, it's like the perfect time to think, OK, what can you do to help your cognition now, but also long term?

Yeah, we don't have that for men, but it definitely works for women.

It is obviously perimenopause is becoming a huge area in health care today.

It is.

almost the buzzword at the moment within general practice and the health space.

Why do you think topics such as brain fog, cognition, perimenopause have become such prominent conversations in recent years?

So I think social media has probably played a large role.

So I think it's provided a space for women to talk about something that was already happening.

And I think when people are concerned about something and then they hear other people experiencing what they're experiencing, it validates their experience.

It stops people feeling sort of weird or crazy that they've got something that no one else does.