Natural menopause
The most common route, and the one that needs no explanation. It usually happens between 45 and 55, and you’ll know you’ve got there once you’ve gone a full 12 months without a period.1
Women's health
Menopause consultation
Get to know your midlife health, from your own sofa. Spend 45 minutes with a menopause specialist going through weight, broken sleep, brain fog, and whatever else is on your list. You'll finish with clear next steps rather than more questions.
From£145.00£99.00
A full 45 minutes by video
No referral needed, book it yourself
Expert advice tailored to you
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What is menopause?
Menopause is a major turning point in a woman’s life. It's not just the end of periods, but a whole-body transition that can affect your mood, memory, sleep, skin, and more. It's driven by a gradual decline in oestradiol (a form of oestrogen), which typically begins in your 40s and continues beyond your final period. This shift can bring a range of physical and emotional changes, from sleep disruption and brain fog to mood changes and hot flushes.1
While conversations around menopause are improving, it’s still not always clear where to turn for support or reliable information. That’s why we’re here: to help you understand what’s happening in your body, explore your hormone health, and access advice when you need it.
Why are you going through menopause?
Menopause, defined as having no periods for 12 consecutive months, is a natural, age-related process driven by a gradual decline in the hormones that support the reproductive system, primarily oestrogen, but also progesterone and testosterone. These hormones play a vital role in various bodily functions like bone strength, brain function, mood regulation, and body temperature control.1
Your body doesn’t give up quietly, either. It tries to compensate by producing more follicle-stimulating hormone to push the ovaries along. Eventually they stop responding, ovulation stops, and your periods end. Officially you’ve reached menopause once you’ve gone 12 months without one. That whole process is what explains the parts that catch people out: the hot flushes, the broken sleep, and the changes to bone density you can’t feel happening at all.1
What causes menopause?
For most women, menopause turns up on its own somewhere in their 40s or 50s. For some it comes earlier, and there’s usually a reason why. These are the main ones.
Surgical menopause
If both ovaries are removed, hormone production stops overnight rather than tapering off. Symptoms can arrive suddenly and forcefully, at any age.2
Having one ovary removed doesn’t cause menopause, though it can bring it forward a little.2
Medication-induced menopause
Some cancer treatments affect the ovaries, sometimes for a while and sometimes for good. Either way hormone production drops, and menopause can arrive earlier than you’d expect.3
Medical conditions
With conditions like Addison’s disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, or Graves’ disease, the immune system can turn on the ovaries by mistake, which brings menopause forward.5
Environmental exposure
Smoking is the best established of these. Pesticides and phthalates, found in some plastics and cosmetics, may also play a part, though the evidence there is thinner.5
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Read the signals, reclaim your balance
Some of these you will recognise. Others you might not.
They can start years before your last period, in perimenopause, which is why plenty of women don't connect them at the time. Any one of them can have another cause, and working out which is which is what the appointment is for.
Hot flushes and night sweats
Sudden heat through your face, neck, and chest, sometimes with sweating that wakes you. One of the more recognisable changes, though how often they happen varies enormously between women.
Weight changes
Weight settling around your middle when nothing about your eating has changed. Shifting hormones, muscle mass, and sleep all feed into it.
Sleep problems
Waking at 3am, or sleeping right through and still feeling flat. Night sweats play a part, and so do shifts in mood and stress.
Brain fog and memory
Losing words mid-sentence, or reading the same paragraph three times over. Common, frustrating, and not a sign you're losing your grip.
Mood changes and anxiety
Irritability, low mood, or anxiety that feels out of proportion to whatever is in front of you. Worth raising properly, because low mood has several possible causes and they need telling apart.
Low energy
Tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix. Your energy might not feel like it once was, and it's worth bringing up.
Joint pain
Stiff mornings, aching hips, throbbing shoulders. Oestrogen has a role in joints and connective tissue, which is why this happens.
Vaginal dryness and low libido
Dryness, discomfort, or a drop in desire. Among the most common changes and the least discussed, and worth bringing up in a consultation.
Meet your BMS-recognised specialist: Dr Emma Sloan
Dr Emma Sloan, BSc (Hons), GMC 7049232, MBBS, MRCGP, PGCert Health and Wellbeing.
Emma is a UK GP specialising in women’s health, menopause, obesity medicine, and preventative health. She holds menopause specialist recognition from the British Menopause Society, SCOPE certification in obesity medicine, and she trains other GPs.
Her work focuses on helping women understand their hormones, reduce future health risks, and feel as well as possible. She's particularly interested in personalised, preventative care that brings together hormonal health, weight management, cardiovascular risk and healthy ageing.
Outside her clinical work, Emma supports The Menopause Charity, helping to improve education and awareness around menopause and women’s health.
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What we can help you with
Your consultation is with a doctor recognised as a menopause specialist by the British Menopause Society.
Make sure to have a recent weight and blood pressure reading to hand for your call, as these are needed to assess your options safely.
If you don't have the equipment at home, your local pharmacy will be able take both readings for you if they offer the service. Most take walk-ins, so there's no need to book ahead.
Hormone health: Where you are in the transition, whether that is perimenopause or menopause, based on your symptoms, your cycle history, and your age.
Metabolic health: Weight and energy, and how both are interacting with your hormones rather than sitting separately from them.
Whole health: Sleep, diet, movement, and how you're thinking and feeling.
A summary for your GP: Everything you discussed, written up and yours to keep, so you are not starting from scratch at your next appointment.
Your path is unique, your care should be too
Long enough to talk through your symptoms properly, 45 minutes with our menopause specialist helps you work out whether you're in perimenopause or menopause, and agree what happens next. At 45 and over, you don't need a blood test to diagnose menopause. You'll leave with a written summary for your GP and a much clearer idea of where you stand.
Start with your consultation
45 minutes by video, wherever you are. This gives you time to go through your symptoms, your history, and what has actually changed.
Agree your next steps
You and your specialist decide what would genuinely help. That might be a blood test, if one would tell you something you don’t already know. It might be support for your weight or your energy. Whatever it is, you’ll leave knowing what it is and why.
Leave with it in writing
Your specialist writes up what you discussed and what was suggested. It’s yours to keep, and it’s built so your GP can pick it up without you having to explain it all again from the beginning.
numan patient
Real people. Real impact.
I’m currently experiencing menopause, which has caused me to gain significant weight. I tried dieting and other medications with little or no effect. I can honestly say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I can see my weight steadily decreasing and my energy levels increasing. I’ve been so impressed with Numan’s service.
I went through menopause and gained a lot of weight during lockdown because of bad habits and hormonal changes. I walk whenever I can now. If there's an option between stairs and an escalator, I take the stairs. It's amazing because I'm 56 and I pass by 30-year-olds who go for the escalator. I’ve gone from focusing on what I can’t do, which was an ever-increasing list, to focusing on what I can do.
I recently underwent a blood test and I found it pretty straightforward to do. The results came back within a couple of days. I’m impressed and would do it again.
WOMEN'S HEALTH DIAGNOSTICS
Hormone Health
Better understand your hormone profile and get control of your health.
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Your questions answered
45 minutes by video with a menopause specialist. You’ll go through your symptoms, when they started, and how they’re affecting you. Your specialist will ask about your cycle, your medical history, and anything you’ve already tried. You’ll then agree what happens next, and you’ll get all of it in writing.
One with specific training in it. Menopause gets very little depth in general medical training, so a GP's core qualification on its own doesn't tell you much about how much menopause care they've actually studied.
It's also worth knowing that "menopause specialist" isn't a protected title. Anyone can use it, whether or not there's further training behind it. So the phrase on its own tells you nothing.
What does tell you something is recognition by the British Menopause Society (BMS). That means a clinician has completed further study and assessment in menopause care specifically, and has been measured against a standard rather than describing themselves however they like.
Your consultation at Numan is with Dr Emma Sloan, a BMS-recognised menopause specialist.
If you'd rather go through the NHS, your GP can refer you to an NHS menopause clinic. Waiting times vary a lot depending on where you live.
Have a recent weight and blood pressure reading ready for your call. Your clinician needs both to assess your options safely. If you haven't got the devices at home, your local pharmacy will do both for free.
You can book yourself. No referral, and no need to speak to your GP first.
No. If you're 45 or over, NICE guidance says menopause should be identified from your symptoms and history rather than from a hormone test, so a blood test is not a prerequisite. If you're between 40 and 45 with symptoms, or under 40, hormone testing can be useful, and your specialist will tell you whether it would help in your case.
No. We're not able to support women who are pregnant or breastfeeding at the moment, so we'd ask you to hold off on booking for now.
Our pre-consultation questionnaire asks about this before your appointment. If you tell us you're pregnant or breastfeeding, we won't be able to go ahead, and we'll refund you in full. In the meantime, your midwife, health visitor, or GP will be best placed to help with what you're experiencing.
Please know that our menopause specialist won't prescribe hormone replacement therapy, though your GP can, and your summary is written to make that conversation easier. In this one in-depth, your clinician will talk you through your options and next steps.
If HRT is your main reason for booking, please email us at [email protected] to share your feedback.
Yes, and that is how a lot of women use it. Your consultation ends with a written summary of what you discussed and what was suggested, designed to be handed straight to your GP. If you have ever come out of an appointment feeling you didn't get to explain properly, that is the gap this fills. It sits alongside NHS care rather than replacing it.
Knowledge
Learn more about menopause
References
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Menopause: identification and management. NICE guideline NG23. Updated November 2024.
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