Menopause, Midlife and a Bit of Bonfire Night Parkin

Pinch, punch, first of the month, and that means one thing on Phil In The Morning: Barbara with Herbs was back in the studio.

And this one was a bit special, because it marked exactly a year since I took over the show from Ian James.

Barbara was one of my very first guests, so we’ve been doing this together for twelve months. Twelve months of her keeping me on my toes and me trying to stop her taking over the show before the adverts. (She’d tell you she never rabbits on. I’ll let you be the judge.)

Ian joined us too, fresh from Good Morning Cheshire, because he’d spent the week talking about something that rarely gets proper airtime on local radio.

Why we were talking about menopause

Earlier in the week, Ian interviewed Mr Brett Winter-Roach from Spire Cheshire Hospital about menopause and perimenopause, looking at it from the medical side, HRT included, and from the angle of the men who often don’t know how to support a partner going through it.

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But I’ll be honest: it felt a bit uncomfortable. A male presenter, a male interviewer and a male consultant. Barbara was the first woman we’d actually heard from on the subject all week. That’s not good enough, and I wanted to put it right.

No one size fits all

Barbara is a consultant medical herbalist and naturopath with a nutritional background, and chair of The Herb Society. Her starting point is simple: every woman is different, so every approach should be too.

“There’s no one silver bullet,” she told us. There isn’t a single herb that does it all. Instead, a medical herbalist spends time getting to know the whole person: their emotional and mental state, their lifestyle, their family background and even their ethnicity, because the timing and experience of menopause can differ quite a bit between women from different backgrounds.

That shapes which herbs are chosen, the dose and even the time of day they’re taken.

Her bigger point was about choice. Menopause is all over social media now, with plenty of celebrities speaking up, and there’s more than one route through it. But you need to make that choice from an informed position, with the right people and the right knowledge.

What actually is perimenopause?

For anyone unsure (and I’ll admit I was a bit hazy), perimenopause is the run-up to menopause, when things start to shift.

Barbara explained that many women notice mood changes, weight gain, or changes in their periods: how often, how heavy, how painful. It often starts in the mid-to-late forties, though there’s no fixed timeline. Menopause itself is usually confirmed once you’ve gone 12 months without a period, and in the UK it typically arrives around 51.

And it’s not just hormones. Barbara talked about the role of the brain (the hypothalamus helps control body temperature, which is where hot flushes come in), the gut microbiome and, crucially, the liver, which does much of the heavy lifting in breaking down oestrogen.

Her view is that if our bodies are loaded up with alcohol, caffeine all day, heavily processed food and a medicine cabinet’s worth of other things, we’re not in the strongest position to cope when “the change” comes along.

Men go through it too

This is the bit that surprised me. Barbara says menopause affects men as well, both as partners and in themselves.

Around 50, so many of us are juggling teenagers, elderly parents, job stress, money worries and relationships under strain. Add in looking in the mirror and not loving what you see, and the pressure of social media, and it can all pile up.

She was also refreshingly frank about the symptoms women don’t talk about, from dryness to bladder problems, and she’s known women who left their jobs because they were too embarrassed to carry on.

It reminded me of being a kid in a supermarket when someone popped a sanitary product into Mum’s trolley as a freebie.

Everyone went red, nobody said a word, and even though I didn’t understand it, I knew something was going on. Kids still pick up on these things, which is why we need to talk about them.

Barbara also mentioned foods such as linseed, soya and fenugreek, which contain natural plant compounds that may help support the body through these changes. She pointed to Japan, where women have traditionally reported far fewer hot flushes, something often linked to a diet rich in soya.

A Bonfire Night treat: Barbara’s parkin

Being Bonfire Night, Barbara brought in her homemade parkin, and it was gorgeous. It’s made with oatmeal (not porridge oats, which is where that lovely crunch comes from), warming ginger and true Ceylon cinnamon, which Barbara says can help with blood sugar balance.

She swaps black treacle for blackstrap molasses, which is rich in iron and a gentle laxative.

Ian checked for hidden vegetables, by the way. None. “Nothing green for Ian.”

We’ll be sharing Barbara’s parkin recipe here on the Mix 56 website soon, so keep an eye out.

Congratulations, Grandma Barbara

Barbara has just become a grandmother, and her granddaughter turned one month old the day she was in, so we played her request: Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville’s “Don’t Know Much”. Congratulations to all the family.

Find Barbara

Barbara Wilkinson practises locally from the Hale area and is chair of The Herb Society, where you’ll find more about her and her work. She’ll be back on Phil In The Morning in the second week of December.

Barbara’s segment is for general information. If you’re thinking about herbal remedies, especially alongside HRT or other medication, speak to your GP or pharmacist and look for a properly registered herbal practitioner.

Listen to Phil In The Morning, Monday to Thursday, 10am to 1pm on Cheshire’s MIX56, at mix56.co.uk