You're not going crazy. You're not broken. And no — it's not "just stress."
Somewhere in your 40s or 50s, your body starts doing things nobody warned you about — the weight that won't shift, the broken sleep, the brain fog, the anxiety from nowhere, the feeling that you've lost yourself. And when you finally go looking for answers, too often you're dismissed, brushed off, or sent away still confused.
What the Peri? is the podcast for women navigating perimenopause and menopause who are done being dismissed and just need someone to make it all make sense. Each episode cuts through the noise, the myths and the medical gaslighting — with honest conversations, real science, and plain-English answers about your hormones, your symptoms, and what actually helps.
I'm Kirsten Cooke — a personal trainer, women's health coach, perimenopause and menopause coach, and mum of four. I'm not talking to you from the outside looking in; I'm walking this road myself. These are the conversations I wish someone had sat me down and had with me years ago.
You are not imagining it. It is not your fault. And you are not alone.
The change you didn't ask for. The conversations you need.
Follow now so you don't miss an episode.
Publisher
Kirsten Cooke
Category
health & fitness · health & fitness · health & fitness
Not in the Mood? Perimenopause, Desire and Your Sex Drive — Part 2 (Ep 15)
(Ep 15) Last week I left you with a woman lying awake in the dark, Googling her symptoms. A few months on, she's said the words out loud to her GP, the vaginal oestrogen is working, and sex doesn't hurt any more. Then one night her partner reaches for her, and she realises she still doesn't want to. If it isn't the pain, then what is it? Is something wrong with her? Does it mean she doesn't love her partner any more? From hundreds and hundreds of conversations I've had with women over the yea...
22 Oct 2026
Dry, Sore and Dreading Sex? Perimenopause and Your Vagina — Part 1 (Ep 14)
(Ep 14) Picture an ordinary week. An itch you can't quite settle, a sting when you wee, jeans that suddenly feel unbearable by Wednesday afternoon. A thrush cream from the chemist that doesn't do much at all. Then one night your partner reaches for you, and you freeze — because the last time you had sex, it felt like sandpaper, and you bled a little afterwards. So you say you're exhausted, roll over, and lie awake Googling your symptoms in the dark. So many women are living this quietly, thin...
15 Oct 2026
One Drink, Full Hangover in Perimenopause — Why Alcohol Hits Harder Now (Ep 13)
(Ep 13) Picture a girlfriend's fiftieth — a long table in her backyard, fairy lights in the trees, and a bucket of ice with the bubbles already chilling. You've barely put your handbag down before somebody presses a glass of prosecco into your hand. And when you say no thanks, there's that little pause, the raised eyebrow, the "go on, just one", and someone joking that you must be pregnant. Suddenly you're explaining yourself, when all you did was say no to a drink. I rarely drink any more, b...
9 Oct 2026
Perimenopause & Your Pelvic Floor — Leaking, Urgency & What Actually Helps (Ep 12)
(Ep 12) You're at a concert with your oldest friends, and when the chorus hits you jump, just once — and you feel it. You tell your friend you just peed a little, tie your jacket round your waist, and spend the rest of the night swaying very carefully. Or you do what one of my friends and her girlfriends did: tie the jackets on, keep dancing, and deal with it at home, all of them in black. And it isn't only concerts. It's the sneeze in the line at the grocery store, the big laugh with a frien...
(Ep 11) You're standing in the vitamin aisle at the chemist with a basket on your arm, stopped in front of a wall of bottles. Some of them say women's on the front. Some of them say menopause. Some have the word hormone printed somewhere on the label. And every one of them looks like it might be the thing that's been missing. Then you get home, open the cupboard, and there they are — the bottles you've already bought. Half of one, a third of another, and one you took for a fortnight before it...
25 Sept 2026
Perimenopause & Protein - What You Need & Why It Matters More Now
You've heard that protein matters at this stage of life, so you've done something about it. A poached egg on your toast in the morning, next to your coffee, and the box feels ticked. Nothing silly about that at all — you did exactly what the message told you to do. What the message never told you was how much. One egg is about six grams of protein. What I'd want to see in a meal at this stage of life is closer to thirty. So that egg, the one you went to the trouble of adding, is covering abou...
18 Sept 2026
Perimenopause & Exercise - The 3 Jobs Nobody Told You About (Ep 9)
(Ep 9) You've been doing the same thing for a year. You trained through Christmas, and through the cold of Winter, and right through the school holidays. You did not miss a session. And at the end of that whole year, you feel like you have very little to show for it. Or it looks nothing like that at all — you haven't trained in years, you've had a go at starting three times already, and each time the body didn't answer the way it used to. Two completely different women, handed exactly the sam...
11 Sept 2026
The Mid Section Weight Gain (Ep 8)
You haven't changed a thing. Not one thing. You're eating the way you've always eaten and moving the way you've always moved, and somewhere in the last year or two your body has quietly rearranged itself. Jeans that still do up, but sit somewhere new. A dress you've worn for years that suddenly needs smoothing down before you walk out the door. Closing the bathroom door now when you shower, because you're too embarrassed for your partner to see you undressed. Dreading shopping for a wedding o...
28 Aug 2026
Perimenopause & Mental Health - Mood, Anxiety, Depression & The Mental Load (Ep 7)
(Ep 7) You get through the day. But you are not the woman you were, and you cannot work out where she went. The sadness that turns up with no reason attached. The rage that goes off before you can stop it, and the guilt at eleven o'clock that night. The days you feel nothing at all — not upset, just flat. And the swinging between all of it, with no warning and no pattern, until you genuinely start to wonder whether you're losing your mind. You love your family completely — and you also want e...
21 Aug 2026
Brain Fog & Perimenopause - You're Not Losing Your Mind! (Ep 6)
(Ep 6) Have you ever been mid-sentence — mid-thought — and had the whole thing simply vanish? Not slip away and come back a moment later. Gone. Or walked into a room and had no idea why you were there? Or reached for the simplest word — banana, fork, the name of someone you’ve known for years — and found nothing there at all? For months, that was my every day. It honestly felt like someone had invaded my brain overnight — this sharp, capable brain I’d built a whole career on, suddenly not min...
13 Aug 2026
The 3am Club - Perimenopause, SLEEP, and How to Get Your Nights Back (Ep 5)
Have you ever fallen asleep exhausted, only for your eyes to fly open at 3am — wide awake, heart pounding, mind racing through everything you forgot to do today and everything you have to remember tomorrow — while the whole house sleeps around you? Welcome to what I call the 3am club. I was a fully paid-up member for years: a personal trainer who spent her whole career telling everyone else to protect their sleep, quietly running on four or five hours of broken sleep myself. I told myself it ...
6 Aug 2026
Hot Flushes & Night Sweats (Ep 4)
Have you ever been mid-sentence in a meeting, or standing at the front of a room full of people, when a wave of heat rolls up your chest and neck, your face flushes, you start to sweat — and you have to carry on as if nothing's happening? Or woken at 3am drenched, heart pounding, wide awake, wondering what on earth is going on with your body? Hot flushes and night sweats are the symptom everyone jokes about — and the one almost nobody actually explains. I've had one hit me mid-class, micropho...
26 Jul 2026
How Your Hormones Actually Work - Oestrogen, Progesterone & Testosterone in Plain English (Ep 2)
Have you ever felt like something has shifted — like you don't quite feel like yourself anymore — but you can't put your finger on why? So many women are living with anxiety that came from nowhere, bone-deep exhaustion, broken sleep, weight that won't budge and a fog they can't shake — without ever realising it could be perimenopause. I was one of them. I saw five different doctors trying to get answers. Not one of them told me the same thing. This week I'm taking you one level deeper — becau...
26 Jul 2026
HRT Debunked - What the Science Actually Says (and Why It Matters for You) (Ep 3)
If the words "hormone replacement therapy" make you nervous — you're not alone. For over twenty years, women have been quietly suffering, too frightened to even consider HRT because of something they half-remember hearing: that it's dangerous, that it causes cancer, that it's doing something artificial to the body. I've lived that fear and confusion myself — told by one practitioner HRT was dangerous, by another that it was essential; put on it, taken off it, and put back on again. So this we...
26 Jul 2026
Is This Perimenopause? The 34 Symptoms & Counting (Ep 1)
You're not going crazy. You're not broken. And no — it's not "just stress." Somewhere in your 40s or 50s your body starts doing things no one warned you about — the broken sleep, the rage out of nowhere, the anxiety, the brain fog, the aching joints — and none of it makes sense. So you ask for help. And too often you're turned away. Told you're too young. Too stressed. That your bloods are "normal." You leave more defeated than when you walked in, quietly wondering if you're imagining the who...
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