Hello, I'm Dr. Louise Newsome and welcome to my podcast. I'm a GP and menopause specialist and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon. I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause support app called Balance.

On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based

information and advice about both the perimenopause and the

menopause. So this morning, I'm very delighted to have two people on the podcast today,

who I've recently met and really enjoyed following so far, and there's going to be a lot more.

We'll hear about them going forwards.

So there's Professor Barbara Ryan and Elaine McGowan who are both friends and co-authors,

actually, of a book that we will talk about.

So welcome both to the podcast today.

Thanks very much, Louise.

Thank you, Louise.

So let's start with you, Barbara.

I think you reached out to me a few months ago and it's been absolutely stimulating, having conversation with you,

not just about gut health, but about medicine and all sorts of things as well. So talk through,

if you don't mind, a bit about your background and what you do. Yeah, so I'm a gastroenterologist and I'm a professor gastroenterology

at Trinity College Dublin. So I did most of my training in Ireland and then I worked in the

Netherlands for a couple of years. I worked in Germany and I worked in Manchester in the UK as well,

furthering my training. I was a consultant in the UK for a while and then I returned to Ireland.

So I guess over the years of my gastroenterology work, while I do a lot of interventional endoscopy,

I've actually found over the years that more and more of my work involves sort of listening to people and what I have technical skills that you can actually gillane such a huge amount

from just listening to patients. And we see a lot of women in particular with problems like

irritable bowel syndrome, which we might talk about that, but that's much more women. And while

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