Roberta Bass (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Now you may notice a fresh look to the podcast and it's also got a fresh new focus. I am Roberta Bass and I'm the founder of Thrive and Shine Women's Wellness and I have a clinic in North Somerset. I also do work online as well.

This episode is going to explain exactly what's happened to the podcast and why, and hopefully give you an idea about what's to come in this new season. may notice a change to the name. That is because I have decided to narrow down the focus of the podcast to purely menopause. I will explain why in a moment.

There is also a fresh new look to the podcast cover, which I have spent hours and hours going back and forth to decide what it should be. It may change again in the future, but I finally decided that good enough is good enough. It doesn't have to be perfect. I will do an episode all about myself being a perfectionist later down the line, but why have I decided to focus on menopause?

If you've listened to the previous season, then you will know that I do lots to do with women's health, but trying to do a podcast that is aimed at everybody is really difficult because there are so many topics that I could cover, all the from just periods, all the way up to postmenopause But...

The reason that I started some of my online business in the first place was to help women with menopause. And that was due to my sister being put into early menopause. So if you go back and listen to season one, I did an interview with my sister. So she was, I think around 37 or 38, and she was diagnosed with chronic leukemia. And she was then undergoing treatment for a year of just some

oral chemo tablets that didn't didn't get the leukemia under control

then had go on to have a stem cell transplant but what they didn't tell her that was due to the amount of chemo that she had initially it kind of fried many many cells in the body to kill off her immune system so she could have new stem cells put in but that fried her ovaries as well that then forced her into an early menopause yet nobody

mentioned that to her. In fact, nobody mentioned anything about fertility or anything until like a week before she was due to have it. And they're like, did you want to freeze your eggs? Did you want to kind of think about having children? But by that point, it was too late. And she had to have the treatment, would have delayed having the transplant if she had kind of gone down that route.

So then she had the transplant and what nobody told her is that then she'd be forced into menopause. You think that might be kind of a key thing that you might be telling any of your women patients that were yet to actually be approaching the menopause. Afterwards, she had all sorts of symptoms. She had joint pain, headaches, fatigue, lots of different...

symptoms that didn't quite add up. She was sent to a rheumatologist, a neurologist, a podiatrist. She was sent to all these different people. And there was me who had done quite a lot of work with menopausal women and I've done various courses that were saying to her, all of these symptoms sound like they're menopausal. And it took like two years down the line and then the GP finally decided actually

Yes, they are likely to be caused by menopause and then she was put on HRT to give her some support with her hormones. However, she had two years of not only recovering from the transplant, but two years of struggling with symptoms that are potentially worse than just going through a natural perimenopause because you're suddenly forced into menopause. Now that's the same if you have medical treatment or if you have surgery and have the ovaries removed.

then you are suddenly forced into like the depth of menopause. So it's not even like that gradual perimenopause to the day of menopause and then post menopause, you're straight in it at the deep end. And when you've not been given any education about this might happen or what to expect or how to improve it, then you can imagine that is difficult. So I...

didn't want anybody else to be in that situation and to struggle, whether it's natural or a medical menopause or surgical menopause, there is information, there is education, there are things that you can do. It isn't just about the medical management. Even if you're on HRT, that doesn't work for everybody. And even if you are, that's just one part of it. If you then...

work on your lifestyle, mindset, subconscious changes. There's all sorts of things that you can do that will improve your health further. And so many women are dismissed by their GP. They're like, I've got this symptom, or I've got this one. And they're like, ⁓ wow, she's part of being a woman. But there is more that can be done. So that is why.

I decided to narrow down my focus for this podcast because that's always been my passion, is to help menopausal women with all sorts of areas of health. That is pelvic health. So I'm a women's health physio. And so obviously I do a lot of pelvic health. I'm also a remedial hypnotist. So I also look at the mindset side of things, thinking about how that affects sleep, but also it can affect you physically. Also having a physio background and

seen many people over the years for joint pains, muscle problems, so obviously treating that side of it as well. So I look at it as a whole person management. So it's okay having HRT that doesn't help everything, it doesn't necessarily help your mindset, it's not gonna tell you to do the right exercises. So I created a system called the Sense Method.

Again, I spoke about this in season one, I will do more about it as we go along, but that is why it's called making sense of menopause because the sense system uses these foundational steps that we need in order to improve your health. So we'll talk more about that in later episodes, but they stand for subconscious empowerment.

nutrition, stress management, sleep and exercise and that is the pillars of all the things that I do to help women because we need that whole person approach. So why have I not just stayed with helping everybody? Unfortunately it's really difficult and stressful to try and help everyone. If you imagine that you were in a room of a hundred people

I talked to lot of people that come for me to hypnosis. If they are people pleases, they want to please everybody. But if you put them in a room with a hundred people, they would do their best to try and please everybody. But there's no way that you can please every single person because they're all different. Everyone has different personalities. Everybody has different things going on in their lives, different ages, different medical conditions.

we're never going to please everybody, unfortunately, but by trying to help everybody, we're helping nobody. So that is why I decided, right, we're going to focus on the thing I'm most passionate about. And I can really make a difference to the lives of those that are perimenopausal and help them to improve their lives in all sorts of ways. It's like a ripple effect. It's like you change one thing and that then changes something else and changes something else.

So that is the focus of this new season of the podcast. So hopefully you like the way, the new designs and the new focus. Also, I'm going to try and make it a little bit more conversational. So you're having a chat with a friend as opposed to being lectured on how to improve things. So hopefully that will resonate with you more.

For now, thank you for joining me on this new season and hopefully you will find that it is really supportive. If in the meantime you feel like you need a bit more support with your symptoms of perimenopause, you will find information in the show notes about free perimenopause masterclass that I've created and this goes through all of the symptoms that you might experience.

it starts to tell you how you can manage it and that's medical management, changing lifestyle. So that is a really good place to start. And then you can use the podcast just to give you those little bit extra steps along the way. So for now, take care and I will see you next time.