Start with your GP, and ask specifically about menopausal hormone therapy. The Australian guidance has changed and for most women MHT is safe and effective; symptoms are not something to get through on willpower. That conversation belongs first, and this page is about what sits around it.
What a long appointment is good for here is untangling what is compounding what. Night sweats break sleep. Broken sleep lowers the threshold for everything else — pain, patience, appetite regulation, concentration. The brain fog that frightens people is very often a sleep problem wearing a different hat. So the first target is usually the nights rather than the days, and that changes what you work on.
Then the compounding factors. Alcohol is the commonest trigger for flushes and the hardest to discuss honestly. Caffeine timing matters more than quantity. Weight and body composition shift in this decade for hormonal reasons, and the response that works is resistance training rather than eating less — muscle mass protects bone, metabolism and mood at once. Bone health deserves an actual conversation: calcium, vitamin D, loading, and a baseline scan if there are risk factors.
We also cover what to raise with your GP, because appointments are short and this list is long. Hands-on work and acupuncture are used for sleep and tension, with modest expectations stated at the start. The clinic is in Lane Cove, five minutes from the village.
