Knowledge is Power When Navigating Menopause

FULL TRANSCRIPT- LISA CURRY TALKING WITH DI GILLETT ON THE POWER OF WOMEN PODCAST.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:02)

Lisa, when you hear the words power of women, what’s the first lived experience that comes to mind?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (00:11)

that comes to mind is everything that I’ve done in my life feels like a stepping stone to where I am today and every stepping stone matters.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:24)

What happens when your body suddenly stops responding the way it always has? When exhaustion, weight gain, anxiety, sleep disruption and emotional volatility become everyday feelings. And you guessed it because we are going to talk about menopause. I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power of Women podcast. And what I love about this platform is the opportunity to showcase and celebrate the strength, resilience and achievement

 

of women from all walks of life. And this is where we have intelligent, grounded conversations about women’s authority, health, leadership, and lived experience without minimizing sugar coating or outsourcing agency. My guest today is Lisa Curry triple Olympian, Australian sporting icon.

 

and co-founder of Happy Healthy You, one of Australia’s trusted women’s health platforms. This is Lisa’s story, her perimenopause and menopause journey, and together with Jeff Butterworth, Lisa has helped build a platform that now supports over 1.5 million women, not just with supplements, but with education, assessment, and informed choice.

 

Lisa Curry welcome to the Power of Women podcast.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (01:48)

Thank you so much, Di Thanks for having me.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (01:50)

Lisa, you’ve had to trust your body for most of your life as an elite athlete and a mother and you truly understand discipline and resilience, particularly in that elite sporting framework. What were the signs that something had fundamentally shifted?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (02:12)

You’re right, I did have to trust my body a lot as an athlete. And I understood every feeling that I had because there are days when you train, you feel great. And there are days that you train and you don’t feel great. But in sport, and particularly in elite sport, you learn to push through. When your coach says you have to do 10 more, when you’ve only got one more in you, you do 10 because that’s what’s required. And you can’t go to the Olympic games, you can’t go to three Olympic games.

 

without that dedication, that motivation, that work ethic of pushing through. And yet at the same time, for my last Olympics, I was also a mother, a mother of two little girls. And there were times when I tried to recreate that feeling of pushing through like I did as an athlete in motherhood. And I realized that I couldn’t do it.

 

It was too hard. had nothing left. And so when I finally retired from my sport and then I had another baby as well. So three kids at that point, I was working, I was still training because I was trying to keep myself in good shape. My body started to change, but more than my body, my mind started to change. So my emotional stability started to crack.

 

And I kept thinking, am I allowed to swear on this?

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (03:44)

You can swear on this because it’s a swearing sort of topic.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (03:49)

Because I was thinking what the fuck is wrong with me. I really thought that I was going crazy my poor husband, you know, he copped everything and Physically, I felt pretty good except you know every fifth day before a period I would just lose my shit about any single thing but more than that emotionally and intelligently I felt there was something wrong. I thought there was something wrong with me

 

I couldn’t put my finger on it. couldn’t work it out. was an absolute cow. ⁓ I was a bitch. went to my doctor to find out what was wrong with me. No one, we’re talking back in the 1990s now, no one was talking about this. Not even the doctor could say to me, it sounds like you’re perimenopausal.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (04:38)

I don’t think we even knew the word peri-many-pords.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (04:40)

No, no, we didn’t and you know if he had said that like they sometimes do today you you’d say what what is that what what’s all about we didn’t know the word menopause because my mum used to talk about it but menopause when you’re 30 menopause feels like it’s for old women yeah and old women i’m talking 50s and 60s and of course now that we’re over 50 and 60 that’s not old right so

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (05:02)

Yeah.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (05:10)

You just think there’s something wrong with you, but I remember going to the doctor and he wrote me out a script for a maid and a massage. Now, I think that was his way of being funny, but it almost trivialized my feeling about everything. And I came away from that thinking, I still don’t know what’s wrong with me.

 

And so I think it really affected my relationship with my husband at the time. You know, was, it was volatile. And at times, you know, I was irrational, moody, angry for seemingly no reason. The weight gain wasn’t a thing for me back then because I was training so much still. ⁓ but it was the, the reactive emotions that I had that really caused a lot of tension, ⁓ in the home. So did you.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (06:05)

think it all though being being an elite athlete and being driven and focused did you actually recognize the mood swing change or did you just put that down to the sort of fire in the belly that you had as an elite performer?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (06:22)

No, because I was very in control of my emotions when I was training, as you have to be. ⁓ But I didn’t realize that my outbursts were happening every month. Because in those days, you didn’t track those sort of things. I I tracked everything in my sport, every single thing that I ate, my sleep, my vitamins, my training, my times, how I felt, every single thing. And my coach would write in my log book every single week, but I never tracked.

 

my feelings and thoughts and emotions. And then when I stopped training, just, I felt lost. I felt almost hopeless. I felt heavy and I felt almost invisible because there was so much going on in my life. And it’s the same with women these days. You know, my daughter’s going through it at the moment. She hates the thought that she’s probably in early menopause.

 

I keep saying to her, I’m really sorry my sweetheart, but I think you are. ⁓ But when you have three young kids and a husband and you work and you’re trying to have some sort of a life, the last person that gets any sort of hope or clarity or energy is yourself. And then therefore your symptoms become worse ⁓ because deprivation of sleep is

 

one of the main causes of a lot of things that happen in your life and being a busy working mom, it’s hard to say, just sleep more because there is, yeah, when exactly there’s this invisible load that mothers have and it’s not just about looking after the kids or the family or going to work. It’s about, I’ve got washing to do.

 

What’s on the weekend? Have I got the lunchboxes? Have I got the food for dinner tonight and for the lunches tomorrow? Who needs a washing uniform? Where are we going? How are we going to do that? I need? Constantly and even at night time you’re thinking about all the things that you need to do for the day and your husband says just go to sleep. like your wish. I wish I could just go to sleep. You know my husband now he’s like he closes his eyes.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (08:26)

instantly on.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (08:44)

30 seconds later I’ll say babe remember we’ve got to do this tomorrow he says I was asleep I said what you just you just closed your eyes how could you possibly be asleep but you know it’s that invisible load that that busy mums have to deal with every single day while they’re going through perimenopause

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (09:06)

I wonder how many divorces, if you could strip it back, actually are caused as a result of menopause and a lack of understanding of everybody in the household as to what that involves. I don’t know that there’s been any stats done on that, but it would be high. It would have to be high.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (09:28)

It would have to be and I distinctly remember times where I would scream at my husband and then find myself curled up in a ball, crying, saying to him, you don’t understand, you don’t love me. And I remember the look on his face. It was like almost fear, but who are you? And then the next day I was fine.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (09:55)

Yep.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (09:56)

So it puts a lot of stress, I think, in a relationship. But I truly believe now that we know all of this. And I speak about this often when I’m talking to groups of women that if they feel like they’ve got these symptoms coming on, that it’s really important to sit down with the whole family and talk to them about it, talk to them about the symptoms, how you’re feeling, how you react, particularly to your husband, and what you need from them.

 

So sometimes you don’t need anything to be fixed. You just need someone to come and give you hug and say, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll get through this. Just take a deep breath. Let me rub your head for you. I don’t know, some simple things that husbands or partners can do. And when kids know that mum is being moody or irrational, not necessarily little kids, but as they’re old enough to understand, you know, they can probably help a little.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (10:52)

That’s so true and it’s such a generational shift Lisa because I do not ever remember and our household was probably not one that was open about emotions and I don’t think I hugged my parents until I married my European husband who was all about kisses on each cheek and all of a sudden my mother got on board. I do not remember her talking about

 

menopause at all. can remember her becoming tricky but we didn’t talk about periods either. mean the approach to periods was something was put on the top shelf in a cupboard from BTUs which was a bag of period pads. Nothing said, no instructions, no conversation. And by the time I was of an age where I felt that I wanted to talk to my mother about menopause she was suffering from dementia.

 

So completely missed opportunity. How do you find we’re going to approach that? I mean, you’re having that conversation, as you said, with your daughter now. Is that a quantum shift in what is happening now generationally around perimenopause and menopause?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (12:13)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think now that we know more about it, it’s so much easier to have those conversations with your daughter, with your granddaughter. And I like to call it, ⁓ there’s two things I talk about. One is the relay of life. So what, and I try and make that ⁓ analogy through my sport, but the relay of life is like the young 10 year old who gets her period.

 

what she knows about herself what she’s going through she will hand the baton to her 18 year old self and that 18 year old self will learn more about reproductive systems in the body and how to deal with school and university and relationships and work and The way that she develops in that time she will pass that baton onto her 30 year old self and then the 35 year old and it goes on and on until you reach postmenopause so I’m 63 now and

 

Then the next part of that, where I talk about the long game, the long game is like, um, well, might, go back. I’ll say, I want to go to the Olympics. So you just don’t go to the Olympics. You’ve got all these steps. So when you’re finally at the Olympics, it started way back. We started 10 or 15 years ago. And so the long game is about trying to be proactive as you grow up through the stages of life so that you can have

 

a great ⁓ third phase of your life. say for example you want to divide your life into three phases. You’ve got you know from zero to 30, 30 to 60, 60 onwards. So that 30 to 60 phase I call midlife which my daughter doesn’t like because she said mom I’m not in midlife. you kind of are.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:04)

She thinks of you as midlife and doesn’t want to reframe that. Yes.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (14:09)

So what you do in each stage affects the next stage. if we can get the information to ⁓ women, to girls, to be proactive with their prevention of the severity of the symptoms that may or may not come, then it will help everybody. And when I say that, there are some people who really struggle with their symptoms. There are people who kind of, you know,

 

up and down like I was and then there are people who just breeze through it. So everybody is different. But my biggest thing that I want people to take away from this and when I speak to women is that knowledge is power. If you can get the knowledge about being proactive about your life and the fact that hormonal change is

 

biology. That’s all it is. It’s your body doing what it’s supposed to do. So you don’t want to interfere with what it’s doing, but you want to work with your body. You can’t beat it. You can’t beat your biology, but you can work with it.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (15:17)

Yeah and I talk about Lisa that that you know having the the willpower to push through can be the the characteristic or quality that makes us great but it can also be our biggest you know biggest detriment too because that ability to push through and and not listen to the signs not listen to our to our bodies is is where we can find ourselves in in trouble. How do we

 

How do we resist if we are inclined to go, I’ve just got to keep going, I’ve just got to keep going, I’ve just got to keep doing things? How do we resist that urge? How do we give ourselves the, and I know it’s an overplayed word, but how do we give ourselves permission to actually address that and listen?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (16:07)

Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things there. ⁓ Firstly, I don’t feel like we should try and override what our body is trying to do naturally. I think we need to learn to work with what’s happening in our body. And when we understand that hormones are just messengers, they’re telling us, they’re telling our bodies something. mean, when you think about perimenopause, it’s when your body starts the transition to menopause.

 

it’s giving you all these symptoms, are messages. Whether or not you listen to those messages is up to you. If you understand that they’re messages, your body’s talking to you, your body’s telling you something. So I tell people you have to listen to what your body’s saying before it starts screaming at you because you don’t want to delay thinking.

 

about what the symptoms are trying to tell you. You want to start to recognize them as they happen and say, okay, I am kicking the cat. I love my cat, but I’m kicking it every month. Why? Why am I doing that? Why am I being a bitch to my best friend when I’m not like that? Why am I getting upset because my husband leaves those funny socks on the floor? Why are these things happening?

 

And when you start to question what’s going on in your life, ⁓ you can start to understand why it’s happening. So hormonally things are changing, they’re shifting, they’re fluctuating. It’s what your body is doing. So as women go through perimenopause, if they understand that their body is fluctuating, it’s all going all over the shop, it makes it easier to be able to find solutions for that.

 

So don’t try and override it just to work with it.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (18:02)

I’m talking with Lisa Curry Australian sporting icon and co-founder of Happy Healthy You and coming up proactive steps women can take before menopause symptoms escalate.

 

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

 

Lisa, one of the most important messages you share is women don’t have to wait. And I think we touched on it earlier. We kind of think of menopause as this something 40, sort of 50, 50 years and beyond. But what does proactive perimenopause awareness look like, especially for women your daughter’s age and many of our children’s age in the 30s and 40s?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (18:59)

It’s recognizing that something feels a bit different and it then reflects having a think about what your hormonal patterns might be and to try and start tracking them. Once your sleep starts to be interrupted, once you start feeling anxious for no reason,

 

Once you start biting people’s heads off for no reason, that’s not you. That’s your body doing something. And I think if you can start tracking your symptoms, and once again, I’ll go back to swimming days. We used to write down every single thing we felt all our times. We were tracking everything, but no one ever taught us to track our feelings or our outbursts or our happy days or our bad days.

 

When you see that they become a pattern and they’re cyclical, ⁓ then you can understand how it’s connected to menstrual cycles and all the ups and downs that you have.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (20:12)

So you’re actually in the education side of what you’re doing, educating people to track that so that you can actually identify the rhythm and the pattern within that?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (20:24)

We talk to people every day. once again, ⁓ it’s out in the media at the moment. No one’s talking about perimenopause. No one’s talking about menopause. Well, we have been for 12 years, right? This is what we do. We’ve had over one and half million ladies download our online hormonal assessment. So if anyone wants to know where to start, that’s a great place to start.

 

And then we have our Facebook group page that has over 203,000 women in one page. So we’re talking to them about it every single day. yeah, last night ⁓ one of my staff members put a post up and some of the responses were, they were really sad to be honest. I thought about it a lot before I went to bed and went to bed thinking these poor women.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (20:58)

That’s a community.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (21:17)

but they’re not alone. They’re not the only ones going through that. And within our group, they understand that they’re not alone because sometimes when you’re going through something, grief of some sort, and it’s not just about grief of losing someone, it’s grief about losing your own identity. Who was I? Who am I now? And in response to some of these people who are feeling really down, ⁓ you know, we can talk about all the

 

solutions that we provide to people. And one of them, I mean, I’ve always said, sometimes the cheapest counseling is a $5 coffee with your friends, you know, and you go and you talk about it. ⁓ But bottling everything up does not help. Absolutely doesn’t help.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (22:05)

What’s your view on identifying and acknowledging menopause in the workplace? Is that a positive thing if it’s recognized as part of our health and wellness journey?

 

You know, in the day to have period pain that was debilitating, you couldn’t even talk about that because that was seen as a weakness as an employee. So what’s the view on menopause and perimenopause interrupting our ability to do our daily jobs?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (22:40)

Yeah, look, I find this a really tough question. And I find it tough because they try to implement a ⁓ period leave.

 

Now, I understand why and I understand people can’t get out of bed sometimes because their periods are so bad. But in saying that, imagine, for example, an airline or a hospital where you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of female staff, each wanting five days off per year. That equates to thousands and thousands of days.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (23:18)

cost a fortune.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (23:22)

I understand, and this is why it makes it tough, I understand that people have debilitating symptoms, but I understand that life still has to go on for work, all right? We need to work, we need to pay the bills. And so in the past, before we knew about the idea that we could maybe take a day off work, we just sucked it up and we just did the job. We went and did our job as well as we could.

 

and then come home and fall apart at home. ⁓ So it is a tough question and I get it, but I also see the the business side of it, which makes it terribly difficult for businesses if all their female staff just keep saying, I’ve got to have days off because I’ve got a bad period. And some people actually do have really bad periods and some people would take advantage of that and just say they have a bad period.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (24:17)

Yeah, and it’s also creating another subclass of pushing back on potentially promoting women too. So there could be a whole roll-on effect if that is not implemented and acknowledged appropriately in the workforce.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (24:36)

Yeah and and this is where we really like to talk about prevention before things become a crisis.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (24:44)

Yep. So what are some of those steps if we look at managing our body versus being educated? Tell us why the understanding of body is key to managing that hormonal transition. What information does that provide us?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (25:04)

And I think being managed means being managed is being told what to do without understanding why, but being educated, you know what’s happening in your body, you understand your options, and therefore you can make informed choices. And I think that’s really important because when you’re educated and when you understand, and it’s like having, it’s like people having those light bulb moments.

 

They read something or they listen to something they are right now I know now I know why I feel like I feel and that is empowering. And when you’re empowered you feel confident enough to say I know what I need now.

 

Sometimes you know what you need, but are you prepared to do what you need? Because life gets in the way, life gets busy. You know you should sleep seven, eight, nine hours a night. You know you should exercise. You know your lifestyle should be good and you know you should eat well, but are you doing it? So that’s my little acrimony is to, that’s my four pillars of health is to look after yourself. Self, S-E-L-F.

 

Sleep, exercise, lifestyle, food. So if you ask yourself those four questions each day, what’s my sleep like? Have I exercised? What is my lifestyle like? Have I eaten well today? Four questions. You can start to see that there’s a bit of a pattern. You can start to see, well, no, I’m not exercising. I only ate well for a little bit of the time. ⁓ My lifestyle, ⁓

 

hate my job, I’m in toxic relationship, I don’t do anything in my spare time, I sit on the phone, scroll all day, I’m not doing anything worthwhile. And I stay up all night watching series and sleep for five hours and then I’m a moody bitch at work the next day.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (27:12)

You probably just described half the population, ⁓

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (27:17)

Sorry. That’s the thing. We’re all adults. If I wanted to be blunt like my coach used to be to me sometimes, he would say, we’re all adults and we all have a choice. You can have the choice of accumulated neglect every single day or you can have the choice of repetitive good habits every single day. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing

 

It’s like the 80-20 rule. It’s about doing things right most of the time.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (27:49)

Yeah, I know in my own world, Lisa, I ⁓ beat myself up about this a bit because I do wonder whether I could have ⁓ made my own menopause journey a little easier. I’m not saying it was the worst of journeys. However, I have been a lifetime sugar addict and I satiated that addiction pretty…

 

generously over the years and I was fish and I was healthy and I was not obese but I had a lot of sugar. I gave up sugar two years ago, processed sugar and with that comes giving up a whole lot of other processed foods that have a follow on effect but I do feel that a lot of the symptoms that I attributed to menopause were probably the symptoms of

 

having a high intake of sugar, inflammation, blood sugar, go on and on and on. But I think, so to your point about self, whilst I ate well most of the time, I probably balled it up with all this sugar that I’d have grazing at my desk until late in the evening working and everything went out the window as a result of it.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (29:11)

Because it’s not just one thing that you have to focus on it. You’ve got to look at the holistic picture Right and there’s there’s so much more to it and you’re right. It’s the inflammation in the body is a massive driver of hormonal imbalance so if people are really honest with What they’re doing every single day Then they can start to see

 

Okay, I can improve here. I can improve here. That’s okay. I can improve here. So I liken it to, ⁓ I talk about this in my speeches too, about people having their jigsaw puzzle in front of them and it’s their life jigsaw puzzle. And if they don’t like their life, if they don’t like how they feel, throw out all the pieces, throw them all out and then only put back the pieces that makes your life the one that you desire. And

 

you leave the sugar out. All right. You leave whatever you want to leave out of it. But two years ago, I quit alcohol as well. And I just realized that I know I remember saying to myself one night, my God, Lisa, if nothing changes, nothing changes. I know that that’s what I tell people all the time, but I wasn’t applying it. Yeah. And so I thought this has got to stop. I was having probably

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (30:28)

to saying it.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (30:34)

You people might think that’s a lot or not a lot, but probably two or three wines a night. One, one, you know, when I was cooking dinner and then two with dinner or after dinner. But if you start to add it up, it’s a lot

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (30:48)

It becomes a lot. Yeah, I think we’ve come to understand there is no good amount anymore. I think that’s that’s where we’ve got to

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (30:57)

It’s amazing because now if I have a wine and I do have one every now and again, gee, can taste it. And if it’s a shit wine, you go, it tastes like meth. It also goes straight to my head. So it’s, it’s interesting. So yeah, like just, just think about your jigsaw puzzle. Think about your life. Think about what you want in your life to make the best possible outcome for you as you move through the phases of your life so that when menopause finally comes,

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (31:07)

Was it worth it?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (31:25)

And then you’re in post-menopause for the rest of your life, you’re an empty nester, the kids are gone, they’re looked after themselves. You can start to travel, you can start to do everything that you’ve wanted to do. You’re free. I call it the freedom years. You know, to be able to do it. You haven’t worked all this time to be exhausted by the time you’re 60. You know, you’ve got to work so that you can live, not the other way around. So by the time you’re in that third phase in your life,

 

You are free to be who you want to be, go where you want to go, do what you want to do.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (32:02)

And health and wellbeing is the piece that underpins all of your ability to do that along with financial stability. But if you’ve got your health as the saying goes, if you haven’t got your health, you’ve got nothing.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (32:14)

That’s right, yep. So every decision you make today, and it’s never too late to start, every decision you make today is going to benefit you in the future.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (32:25)

Yeah. Lisa, the debate between natural therapies and HRT or doing, taking nothing for it’s been raging for years and I know there’s been misinformation that has come out and that has been amended over time. What does an integrated evidence-informed approach look like for managing HRT or menopause?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (32:53)

depends who you talk to. So if you speak to a doctor, you will get a different answer than if you spoke to an integrative doctor. And then you might get another answer if you spoke to a natural practitioner. So my whole life, I’ve always tried to always go the natural way. It’s just the way I am. think because

 

I think mainly because I saw what my mum went through and she had a pill for this, a pill for that, a pill for that and then she had all the side effects and then they gave her more pills and I used to see them all lined up and I thought, my God, I never want to be like that. So I’ve always gone the natural route. So we have a really great protocol on our website at the moment about people who are on HRT and what their options are. So

 

I’ll try and explain it this way. So HRT is one option and it works fantastically for some people. ⁓ HRT is one option and I can call that the quick fix. And then I have a medium term fix, which is like a combination of HRT and natural supplements. So that’s, and that’s where we come in. We have a really great approach to that and a great protocol for that on our website.

 

The third approach is a longer term approach, which is the natural supplement approach. It takes longer. You’re not going to get that quick one week fix. It’s going to take three, four months for everything to kick in until you start feeling normal, calm, and balanced again. And then there’s another approach of what I call the self fix, which is you don’t take anything, but you really look after yourself. You eat well, you exercise, you do everything, and you’re very educated and you know exactly what you need to do.

 

So that’s a choice. there’s four choices. There’s four options there. Now, if I take that one step further, there’s, I think, like three different types of women. The first type of woman is the one who, at the moment, feels down, hopeless, completely desperate and struggling. She doesn’t know where she’s at. Everything’s overwhelming. She’s burnt out. She’s lost herself. She doesn’t know where she is.

 

The second type of woman is someone who’s really trying hard, you know, she’s trying to eat well, she’s trying to exercise, she’s trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but maybe she’s not being consistent enough to see results. And then the third type of woman is someone who’s really got their act together. So they know exactly what they need to do, they eat well, they exercise and they feel great. So when you, and I don’t know maths very well, but you’ve got four options here.

 

three different types of women but when you interact those options and those types of women there’s a lot of different options.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (35:54)

There is and I imagine we dip in and out of, you know, can be one option but you dip in and out of one of the others at different points and times or different days.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (36:04)

And

 

depending what’s happening in your life, you might go from that number three lady to the number one lady because you’ve got some grief in your life and then, you know, something, the HRT doesn’t work or the natural supplement doesn’t work or the combination does. There’s so many different options, but at least today we have options. At least today, we in my company, HappyLFU, we have solutions for people. We’re really proud of that. We have a lot of people who have had such great results.

 

And we know that because we have so many ladies within our groups taking our products, we know. We don’t think, we know. Having over one and half million ladies download our online assessment, great research. And it’s just over 20 % of the Australian population of women who are in perimenopause and menopause. So we know our statistics, we know what ladies need and want.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (36:49)

Good research base.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (37:02)

We polled our ladies in our Facebook group page and asked them what their main symptoms were and the top three were sleep, anxiety and weight gain. So we know that ⁓ those symptoms are the primary symptoms and we make products to suit those symptoms. So we pretty much have something for everyone. ⁓ We know that women are passing their products over to their

 

husbands as well. They’re getting great results. we don’t think we know.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (37:36)

They have mood swings too.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (37:38)

They

 

do, they do. But you know, I think the great thing for us is we don’t think we know what we’re talking about. We know what we’re talking about because we’ve been doing for 12 years. My business partner, he’s a hormonal specialist. All my staff are amazing, highly educated practitioners and people should feel safe with us.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (37:47)

It’s evidence based.

 

Yeah, yeah, that’s brilliant. How many in the organization Lisa, how many people do you employ?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (38:07)

20. Some are contractors, some are full-time, part-time, but we are a remote business. By being remote, we can choose the best around Australia and around the world. We have people all over the world.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:23)

Having spent 30 years in executive search, used to pitch that as options rather than having to compromise based on only selecting the person who was available right in your market. I think COVID cracked that thinking wide open because all of a sudden it became possible.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (38:43)

That’s what makes us different to everyone else as well. We have a team of practitioners who are talking to and working with our ladies every single day. And for women in our Facebook group, it’s free of charge. They don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to go and chat to a naturopath. We provide that for them.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:06)

So tell me as a 62 year old female, do the post menopause symptoms phase out and disappear over time? Where to from here for you and I? ⁓

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (39:21)

I

 

don’t know if you meant you’re 62 but I’m 63. There you go. I don’t feel it though.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:26)

Well I’m 62.

 

No, neither do I. Absolutely don’t.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (39:35)

I

 

think once menopause is over, which is 12 months for no period, done, the symptoms that you had leading up there don’t just stop, they linger. They continue and they linger and they finally start to peter off. Now, depending on how you looked after yourself in the previous phases will depend on how long or how severe those symptoms will continue. So for me now, ⁓

 

If I’m moody or cranky, my husband will say, have you been taking happy hormones? And I’ll say, no, you’re actually just giving me the shit. So there’s a difference, right?

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (40:16)

That’s not an excuse for your crabby behaviour. No, I know.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (40:20)

No, he’s gorgeous. But every now and again, I’ll get a hot flush. So I’ve just been over in Quebec and Canada. It was minus 30, minus 20. And at some point I’m like, oh my God, I’ve got to this jacket off. And just all of a sudden I had a hot flush. And usually now I know if I’d had a wine, I get hot flush. If I have too much coffee, I get a hot flush. So now I can see the absolute relevance with what I just had.

 

to what I’m just getting now. So ⁓ I think another side effect of postmenopause is your tolerance for bullshits.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (40:50)

No.

 

post-murder pause or is that just age?

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (41:05)

No, I don’t know. there’s a couple of things. I feel much calmer. Things that used to bother me just don’t anymore. I don’t care. I mean, if someone wants to do that or say that, you know what, it says more about you than me, I don’t care. And I’m able to move on. before, I’d be really reactive and I wouldn’t lie, it would sit with me for a long time. But I’m happy to know and feel

 

that all the symptoms that I’ve had for the last 20 years are finally just settling down. And that’s what happens. Everything settles down. So there is light at the end of the tunnel for all the women out there who are tearing their hair out, feeling like there’s something wrong with them, which is there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s just what your body’s doing. It’s just biology and you will get through it. Take a breath. Everything will be okay.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:00)

Beautiful. Lisa, I’m going to throw three quick questions at you if I could to bring today to a ⁓ conclusion. One thing you wish you’d known five years earlier.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (42:16)

⁓ One thing that I wished I’d known five years earlier was what was coming and I think like I’ve said it’s I mean I didn’t exercise physiology at uni and if everybody could do a course in a semester in biology they would understand. It’s all biology, it’s what your body is meant to do so don’t fight it just work with it.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:43)

Yeah, it’s so true. One symptom women often dismiss, but they shouldn’t.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (42:49)

I think the big one knowing how we polled so many women is the sleep. I think if you can, once again, it’s really hard with, you know, moms that have got kids and work and sleep is the biggest thing. But if you can just try and prepare yourself for sleep at nighttime by making sure the room is cool and dark, even if you sleep in a separate room where there’s no noise or disruptions. I now wear an eye mask and I find that’s a lot better.

 

but just feeling that peace and contentment as you go to sleep. Everything’s done. I’m write my list so it’s not in my head, which I often did. I learned that from my mom. Everything for today has been done. There’s nothing more that I need to do today. So just take a breath and feel content that my day has finished.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (43:32)

Yep.

 

Yeah and to your point about the sleep I must admit even now Lisa I still find some nights I wake up and I’ve got a leg sticking out the side as my temperature control mechanism just to get some air on my foot so I don’t know whether they’ll ever go away or not.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (44:02)

I

 

I’ve worked out the pajama situation. I think if you wear a singlet top and just undies, like don’t have longs on your legs. And I think that I think I’ve got the combination right. So yeah, cause you can just put your arm out, but your legs aren’t hot. So ⁓ I put the air conditioning on my husband said, it’s not that hot. I go, you’re not me. So he’s like snuggled up in the blankets and, ⁓

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:12)

Yes.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (44:31)

But he says, come over here, know, come in for a cuddle.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:35)

last

 

thing you want to do because it makes you too hot.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (44:38)

Ten seconds like, okay babe, love you but you know, you’re too hot, too much body heat.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:45)

I can relate to that and I suspect there are many listening who will relate to that.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (44:50)

But I think to have a laugh about it every now and again because if you don’t laugh about it, you’re going to cry.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:59)

Now Lisa, do we find you? Because you mentioned there is ⁓ some online tools that people can jump on, on your website I presume, and access those.

 

LISA CURRY OLY [GUEST] (45:11)

Yeah, so the website is happyhealthyew.com.au and on there you’ll find a huge range of resources. But the main one is to download the online assessment. So that’ll give you a really good snapshot of where you are at this point in time. If you follow some of the things that we talk about, you can do that assessment again in six to 12 months time and see if symptoms have changed a little bit. Obviously we do have support, we have products that have been

 

proven to be really great for a lot of women. And then we ask people to join our community. there’s 203,000 women in one group. We have about six or seven different groups. So we’ve got a group for PCOS and endometriosis. We’ve got a teenage group. We’ve got a happy reset group, happy weight group. So there’s different groups of different subsets of people. But the main one is our happy, healthy new community. And I’m in there.

 

All our staff are in there. talk every single day. you know, we just want to, that’s, you know, I think if I had to summarize what I stand for now, going back to what we spoke up, spoke about first up was my whole life has been like a stepping stone to where I am now. And now I’m that woman who has, who has turned my lived experience into

 

light for other women. I’ve walked the path and now I walk beside women and help them along their way. I wanna see people I wanna see women stand on their own dais. I wanna see ladies stand up and go I did it. I feel I made I did it. You know I achieved this or I did that or I changed this or I went there or changed my life. Standing on your own dais

 

And it doesn’t have to be a huge achievement, but just even small achievements add up to make you feeling that life is worthwhile and life matters.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (47:15)

Yeah and that’s exactly what Power of Women is about because it’s through the lived experience and sharing of that through storytelling that we can offer resourcing to others be it mentoring formally or informally and that’s not to say that you don’t have to go through something to truly understand it but there’s loads of lived experience out there to be gleaned from others and I think we’re far more inclined

 

to share that now rather than to have all of these no-go zones of things that we don’t talk about. And that’s the benefit of hindsight and how lucky are we? We can actually access that. Thank you so much for joining us today, Lisa. I’m gonna add your website details onto the show notes. Be sure to follow the podcast and if you think this is an episode that somebody in your network can benefit from,

 

Pass it on, share it to them, bring it to their attention. And in terms of subscribing and following so that you know what fabulous next episodes are coming because there is a string of extraordinary guests in the lineup for 2026 and I look forward to sharing them with you. Until next time.