Menopause. It’s not a dirty word. It’s not “the end.” And it’s definitely not something you should just suffer through in silence. But let’s be real - most of us didn’t grow up learning about what actually happens to our bodies during this stage of life. Hot flushes? Mood swings? Sleepless nights? You’re not losing it. You’re going through a hormonal revolution.
Enter: Dr. Shashi Prasad. She’s not here to sell you magic pills or promise a menopause-free existence. She’s here with real talk and science-backed ways to make this stage work for you - not against you. Because midlife isn’t a crisis - it’s a chance to reclaim your body, your energy, and your power.
Dr. Shashi Prasad is a Women’s Hormonal Health and Weight Loss expert at The Marion Gluck Clinic. She’s spent her career helping women navigate the wild rollercoaster of hormonal shifts - especially around menopause - with real tools, grounded wisdom, and a whole lot of compassion. She's part hormone expert, part myth-buster, and 100% on your side.
So let’s hand it over to Dr. Prasad, who’s here to break it down without the BS.
What’s Really Going On in Perimenopause (and Why It Matters)
Menopause marks a major hormonal shift in a woman’s life, a transition that brings massive physical and emotional changes. As estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone levels fall, symptoms like hot flushes, mood swings, poor sleep, fatigue, and low libido often appear. It’s also a time when the risk of high blood pressure, cholesterol, insulin resistance and heart disease increases.
Perimenopause is a key phase in a woman’s life. The changes you make now can profoundly impact your metabolism, strength, and long-term wellbeing.
Here are five evidence-based ways to ease menopause symptoms and thrive through midlife.
1. Move with purpose
Women who enter perimenopause with better fitness and a healthy weight often experience fewer and less intense symptoms. Exercise is a powerful tool - it helps maintain strength, supports heart health, lifts mood, and protects bones.
Strength training two to three times a week preserves bone density and muscle mass. Add short bursts of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or brisk walking for heart health and include yoga or Pilates to enhance flexibility and calm the nervous system. Aim for about 2½ hours of moderate activity per week.
A growing midlife fitness trend is functional training; combining strength, balance, and mobility work to improve real-life movement. Reformer Pilates, barre, and strength-based yoga are especially popular for maintaining flexibility and joint stability without strain.
If you like data, try heart rate variability (HRV) monitoring to track recovery and stress. A lower HRV may indicate fatigue or poor sleep, while a higher HRV reflects better resilience. Tracking HRV trends can help you tailor workouts and avoid overtraining, especially during hormonal changes.
Exercising with friends or in a group adds motivation, accountability, and joy, a simple way to make fitness fun again.
2. Food is medicine
Hormonal changes can shift metabolism, leading to fat gain (especially around the waist) and muscle loss. Because muscle drives metabolism, this can lead to fatigue, insulin resistance, and weight gain.
To counter this, eat to stabilise blood sugar, support muscle, and reduce inflammation. Include a source of protein in every meal such as eggs, fish, lentils, or tofu, along with fibre-rich foods like colourful vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and seeds.
Gut health is crucial in menopause. The estrobolome, a group of gut bacteria that help regulate estrogen, influences mood, weight, and symptom severity. Support it with loads of prebiotics fibre and fermented foods like kefir, kimchi, and live yoghurt.
A Mediterranean-style diet rich in plants, olive oil, fish, and herbs has the strongest evidence for reducing menopause symptoms. Stay well-hydrated too, aim for about three litres of water daily.
3. Manage stress proactively
Midlife often brings a perfect storm of stress, career demands, children, ageing parents, and health concerns. Prolonged stress keeps cortisol high, worsening fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, and low libido.
Chronic stress also causes “cortisol steal,” diverting resources from production of estrogen and testosterone which worsens menopausal symptoms.
To manage stress, build daily “micro-recovery” habits. Pause for deep breaths or go for short walks. Regular practice of mind-body techniques like meditation, breathwork, or mindful nature walks help regulate your cortisol.
Nurture connections and laughter with supportive friends. Joy and laughter are natural hormonal balancers, boosting oxytocin and lowering cortisol, essential ingredients for resilience and wellbeing.
4. Prioritise restorative sleep
Sleep struggles are one of menopause’s most common and most frustrating symptoms. Hormonal shifts, night sweats, and stress can disrupt rest, yet quality sleep is vital for mood, metabolism, and focus.
Support better sleep by keeping a consistent bedtime routine, avoiding screens for at least two hours before bed, keeping your room cool, dark, and airy. Try calming techniques such as deep breathing, Yoga Nidra, or meditation before bed.
Think of sleep as your nightly reset, when hormones rebalance, the brain clears toxins, and the body repairs. Prioritising it is one of the simplest ways to reduce menopause symptoms.
5. Support your body with smart supplementation
Lifestyle foundations matter most, but the right supplements can help. Women often end up with cupboard full of supplements which they may not need. My top ones are Vitamin D for bone and immune health, Magnesium for relaxation and better sleep (choose Glycinate or Taurate), Omega-3 fatty acids for mood and heart health and B vitamins for energy and nerve support.
Menopause is not an ending but a time to realign, improve or reinvent yourself. With small, consistent lifestyle changes, you can ease symptoms, strengthen your body, and enhance long-term heart, bone, and brain health.
Midlife isn’t about surviving, it’s your chance to thrive.
Final Thoughts on Managing Menopause Symptoms
So here’s your reminder: you’re not broken, you’re evolving. And with the right info and a few small shifts, this next chapter can be powerful as hell. Share this with someone who needs to hear it (your mate, your mum, or your younger self). The more we talk about menopause, the less power it has to scare or shame us. Let’s keep the convo going - and keep owning our cycles, at every stage.
About The Marion Gluck Clinic
The Marion Gluck Clinic is the UK's leading medical clinic that pioneered the use of bioidentical hormones to treat menopause, perimenopause and other hormone related issues. Founded by Dr. Marion Gluck herself, the clinic uses her method of bioidentical hormonal treatment to rebalance hormones to improve wellbeing, quality of life and to slow down ageing.
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