When you are lying awake at 3am, heart racing a little, feeling exhausted but somehow wired, have you ever wondered if what you are going through is actually perimenopause, or if there might be something else tangled up in the mix too?

There is a tiny, largely unsung community of bacteria living in your gut right now that has a direct say in how much oestrogen is circulating around your body. It is called the oestrobolome, and once you understand what it does, so many of the changes you feel during perimenopause and menopause start to make a lot more sense. Gut health and menopause do not sound like they belong in the same sentence. But stick with me, because this is one of those "why did nobody tell me

These past few weeks, something I have noticed is that so many of the women I work with have been feeling flat, foggy and utterly worn out. Their get up and go has got up and gone. The washing basket feels like a mountain, the to do list feels heavier than usual, and even the things they normally love have started to feel like a bit of a slog.