What if the thing that makes you feel safest… isn’t actually helping you?

In this episode of On the Mones, Kate unpacks a deceptively simple idea with enormous consequences: comfort is not evidence.

It starts with a respectful — but confronting — comment thread on a debunking video about naturopathy, vulnerability, and communication. From there, the conversation widens into something much bigger: why women in midlife are so often sold reassurance instead of rigour, validation instead of verification, and how “feeling heard” has quietly become a substitute for clinical outcomes.

Kate explores:

• Why warmth, charisma, and simplification can be persuasive — but dangerous — in healthcare
• The lack of regulation around naturopathy and why “my clients love me” is not a defence
• Real-world harm, including Australian regulatory cases involving banned health practitioners
• How wellness culture targets women — especially during hormonal vulnerability — and why that matters

From there, the episode pivots into a clear, evidence-based deep dive on SSRIs:

• How SSRIs actually work in the brain (and what they don’t do)
• Why they’re sometimes prescribed for hot flushes
• And how perimenopausal anxiety is frequently treated with antidepressants when estrogen deficiency may be the real driver

Through a clinical lens — and a personal story — Kate makes the case for better questions, better context, and fewer lazy defaults when women in their 40s and 50s present with anxiety.

This episode also features a Woo of the Week takedown of “adrenal fatigue” — why it isn’t a diagnosis, why it feels comforting, and how it turns complex physiology into fast food.

If you’ve ever been told:

• “At least she listens”
• “It can’t hurt”
• “It makes people feel better”

This episode is your pause button.

Because feeling cared for matters — but only evidence protects you.

A ninety-year-old man walks into a community pharmacy, forgets his wallet… and pays for his prescriptions with Chaucer.
A stranger steps in with quiet generosity.
And somehow, that moment lodges — deeper than it would have twenty-five years ago.

If you’ve noticed that things land differently in midlife — emotions linger longer, moments feel heavier, meaning matters more — you’re not imagining it.

And if, at the same time, your periods have gone completely off the rails — heavier, closer together, unpredictable, exhausting — this episode is for you.

And because it wouldn’t be On the Mones without it, we finish with Woo of the Week: magnesium — the mineral that somehow got promoted to nervous-system saviour, hormone therapy, and emotional support supplement. What it actually does, where it helps, where it absolutely doesn’t.

If your bleeding is disruptive, your emotions feel deeper, or you’re being told this is “just your age” — this episode is here to remind you:
you’re not dramatic, you’re not failing, and you’re allowed care, clarity, and proper answers.

In this episode of On the ’Mones, Kate Thomas — pharmacist, midlife woman, and professional oversharer — tackles one of the most distressing and misunderstood parts of perimenopause: what’s actually happening to your brain.

If you’ve found yourself forgetting words, losing focus, feeling anxious “for no reason,” questioning whether you suddenly have ADHD in your 40s, or quietly Googling early-onset dementia at 2am — this episode is for you.

Because here’s the truth:
You are not stupid. You are not lazy. And you are not losing your mind.
Your estrogen has simply stopped doing its full-time job.

Kate explains how estrogen functions as the brain’s unseen office manager — coordinating dopamine, serotonin and acetylcholine — and what happens when that system starts running on skeleton staff. The result? Brain fog, anxiety, poor memory, emotional volatility, sleep disruption, and a sudden collapse in cognitive resilience.

This episode covers:

• What estrogen actually does in the brain (spoiler: it’s not just about reproduction)
• Why brain fog feels cognitive, not emotional
• How perimenopause can unmask ADHD traits in midlife women
• The critical differences between brain fog, anxiety and burnout
• Why treating hormonal symptoms with productivity hacks or “just manage stress” advice backfires
• The role of sleep loss as a cognitive and emotional multiplier
• What estrogen therapy can — and can’t — do for cognition
• Where SSRIs, SNRIs, stimulants and off-label menopause medications do fit (and where they don’t)

Kate also shares a brutally honest story from a midlife dinner party that spirals into a candid conversation about libido, testosterone therapy, HSDD, and the unequal way men’s and women’s sexual health is treated in medicine — including why prescribing Viagra or Cialis without considering the partner is clinically short-sighted.

And in this week’s Woo of the Week, Kate takes a hard look at black cohosh:

• What it is (and what it definitely isn’t)
• What randomised controlled trials and Cochrane reviews actually show
• Why “natural” doesn’t mean effective
• And how oversold supplements cost women time, money and confidence

If you’ve ever felt gaslit by your own body, dismissed by well-meaning advice, or ashamed of changes you couldn’t explain — this episode gives you language, biology, and relief.

Because desire, clarity and resilience aren’t personality traits.
They’re physiological processes — and they deserve real information, real medicine, and real conversations.

You’re not broken.
You’re early to the conversation.