I have always been interested in how the body works. I am not perfect and don't always live the most healthy lifestyle, but I have always had an awareness of what keeps me healthy and what throws me off track. Exercise and food were things I used to balance quite naturally. When I needed to get fitter or lose a few pounds, I knew what to do and it usually worked. I trusted that system because it had always responded in predictable ways.

That changed after I was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. I was lucky. It was caught very early and treated quickly with surgery and radiotherapy. But afterwards I was prescribed medication that blocks oestrogen, and that medication changed everything. It felt as though my body had rewritten its own rules. Sleep became disrupted. I developed joint pain, heart palpitations, and metabolic changes that made my body feel unfamiliar and harder to predict. For the first time in my life, the old methods stopped working.

My background is in science, so my instinct was to look for answers. I began to read, to study, and to question. I wanted to understand what had happened to my body and why nothing made sense any more. The deeper I went, the more I realised that what I was experiencing was not unusual at all. It is incredibly common for women entering perimenopause or menopause. The problem is that those changes are not widely discussed, and so women do not understand their own bodies or how to support them.

What frustrated me most was discovering how limited the research base can be when it comes to women. A lot of the studies that shape everyday advice on diet, exercise, and performance have been carried out on men, or on mixed populations where sex and life stage differences are not analysed in a meaningful way. Researchers have often assumed women will respond the same way. We do not. As a very prominent female scientist by the name of Dr Stacy Simms say, women are not small men. Our physiology changes across the month, across the years, and especially across the menopause transition. Yet much of what women are told to eat, how they are told to train, and how they are told to recover is built on data that does not reflect them.

Realising that made me both curious and determined. I wanted to know what is actually true for women. I wanted to see what good research does exist and how it can be translated into practical guidance. I wanted to turn science into something usable, so women do not waste years second guessing themselves.

That is how This Body began. It started as my own search for understanding and grew into a commitment to share knowledge in a way that is clear, evidence-led, and practical. This Body exists so women can understand their physiology, make informed choices, and stop being asked to trust advice that was never designed with them in mind.

What this became

This Body is not a personal blog. It is a platform built to reduce confusion by holding health claims to a higher standard. The goal is simple: accuracy first, transparent sourcing, and information people can use.

If you are an individual navigating symptoms, training changes, sleep disruption, energy shifts, or conflicting advice, start with the Framework. If you are an organisation, the Corporate page explains how we bring evidence-led education into the workplace in a way that is practical, respectful, and designed for the real world.