In this episode of The Egg Whisperer Show, I’m thrilled to welcome Dr. Nitu Bajekal, an incredibly experienced obstetrician and gynecologist with nearly 40 years in clinical practice. Known by many as “Dr. Magical Bajekal,” she brings invaluable insights into the world of menopause, PCOS, endometriosis, and complex vulval issues.
We dive deep into the topics of perimenopause and menopause, discussing why recognizing these phases is so essential for women’s health. Dr. Bajekal shares how menopause is diagnosed and highlights the powerful role of lifestyle medicine and plant-based nutrition in managing symptoms. And, we discuss her new book, Finding Me in Menopause: Flourishing in Perimenopause and Menopause using Nutrition and Lifestyle.
We also tackle some common myths around menopause and explore how lifestyle choices and family history impact this stage of life. Dr. Bajekal offers expert advice on PCOS management and talks about her inspiration for co-authoring Living PCOS Free with her daughter. This conversation is packed with empowering information aimed at helping women make informed choices for their health.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How perimenopause spans the years leading up to menopause
- The powerful role of lifestyle choices, like a plant-based diet, in managing symptoms
- The importance of seeking knowledgeable care for menopause’s 34 symptoms
- Why prioritizing sleep, reducing alcohol, and managing stress can boost health
- That pregnancy is still possible during perimenopause, so contraception is needed if you don’t want to conceive
- Her new book, Finding Me in Menopause: Flourishing in Perimenopause and Menopause using Nutrition and Lifestyle.
Resources:
Dr. Aimee’s Fertility Essentials
Full Transcript:
Dr. Aimee: I am thrilled to have Dr. Nitu Bajekal on today’s show. Welcome, Nitu.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Thank you so much, Aimee, for having me. I’ve been listening to your podcast and I just love everything about it, especially the name The Egg Whisperer. Fantastic.
Dr. Aimee: You have quite the name, too. Your patients call your Dr. Magical Bajekal. I think you are magic with all the things that you’re doing.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Thank you.
Dr. Aimee: For our listeners and viewers who don’t know you yet, I’d like to share a little bit about you. Dr. Bajekal is a senior consultant obstetrician and gynecologist in London with nearly 40 years of clinical experience in women’s health, specializing in lifestyle medicine, menopause, PCOS, endometriosis, and complex vulval issues. A skilled keyhole surgeon, she’s experienced in laparoscopic procedures including robotics. Dr. Bajekal is one of the first board-certified lifestyle medicine physicians in the UK and a fellow of the Royal College, receiving the Indian President’s Gold Medal. She co-authored ‘Living PCOS Free’ and has a new book that we’ll talk about today, ‘Finding Me In Menopause’, focusing on perimenopause and menopause care. Passionate about education, she provides reliable health information through her website and runs a voluntary service to empower women and girls to improve their health through lifestyle choices. Welcome again, Nitu.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Thank you, Aimee. What a long introduction. Is that me?
Dr. Aimee: First of all, your family must be so proud. When I saw that you wrote ‘Living PCOS Free’ with your daughter, I was so touched by that. I hope that one day I get to write books with my children as well. Let’s get into some of these definitions, because I don’t feel like women know enough about what is perimenopause, how it is defined, what is menopause. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Of course. The term perimenopause can come with a little bit of apprehension and concern because it has the term menopause attached to it. Perimenopause means the time around your menopause. Let’s start first with the definition of menopause, which is basically when a woman completely stops her period. It’s a retrospective diagnosis, which basically means that you look back and you haven’t had a period for 12 months and you’re now menopausal. Women often will think that’s the end, I’m menopausal for two or three years, and I’m now through menopause. You actually remain in menopause until the day we die. With life expectancy increasing, that’s about three decades.
There’s a lot we can do to empower women much earlier on so that we can actually have our best lives. Historically, people will always say you’ll be in your 50s, the average age of menopause is 51 all over the world, but actually that’s not necessarily true. The range is between 45 and 55. What happens is if you ask, for example, a woman from the Indian subcontinent, a Southeast Asian, or if you’re from the African Caribbean community, your periods may actually stop much earlier. For example, we know women from certain parts of India will stop their periods around 45, 46, 47, much earlier than the 51, and some women will go on until 55. It’s a range, so not everybody will stop around that time.
Perimenopause is the time leading to menopause, it’s the time that is two to eight years before you completely stop your periods, when your egg reserve starts dropping. What is menopause? You’re born with almost a million eggs at the time of birth, and then they start diminishing slowly but surely. By 35 or 37, there’s a steep decline. What happens is perimenopause when the number of eggs drop below a critical level, say about 1,000, your periods stop. But the changes start occurring two to eight years before, so women may notice shortening of cycles, they may start skipping periods.
If you have conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome, for example, you might get confused as to what’s actually happening because there are no real good tests for diagnosing perimenopause. That might be the first time you’re thinking maybe I need to start a family, maybe I need to freeze my eggs, maybe I’ve just sorted my career out, and you’re 35, 36, 37. If you have access to your mother or if they’re willing to tell you, your mother or your grandmother, then maybe you’ll have some inkling as to when their periods stopped because there is some correlation.
The truth is a lot of women at 35, 36, and 38, which is the common age in the UK, and I’m sure it’s the same in the US, when they’re thinking about egg freezing. They’ll send off a test in the post to do their AMH, and then they get back a result and they are absolutely horrified because those levels are low, they are not expecting that. They are seeing a whole lot of celebrities having their babies in their 50s. There are many ways of having a baby, as you know, and it’s not necessarily always with your eggs.
You and I are here to educate people so that if they are wanting to build their family with their own eggs, we want to educate them that perimenopause may start two to eight years before you’re destined to stop your periods. You actually don’t know when your periods are going to stop. That may happen in your late 30s. Be aware. Knowledge is power. I just wanted to bring that in as to what perimenopause is, time leading up to menopause.
Dr. Aimee: That is so important because it can be so scary, just like you said. Getting that diagnosis makes a woman feel like there is something wrong with her. The reality is that’s just normal reproductive human biology, it’s just part of life. If we embrace it as such and understand it, then you’re not rushing to the doctor, calling saying, “I skipped my period. I’m so scared.” There’s nothing scary about it. I can understand emotionally it’s scary, but it’s actually quite normal.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Yes. It is quite normal. As I said, if you are somebody who hasn’t really finished completing your family, or if you have other medical conditions, you might think it might be your thyroid or PCOS and things like that. Being aware, but also not falling prey to – as you know, there are a lot of tests that people are doing, sadly those are not of help to diagnose perimenopause. It’s a clinical diagnosis.
You may notice bone loss, you may notice the lipid changes, cholesterol levels may drop, but also lowered mood, lowered libido, not wanting to have intercourse when it’s quite important if you’re trying to conceive. Of course, you must check for pregnancy as well if you’re missing periods. It’s a lot of things that people have to remember, but you must not be scared. Knowledge is important.
Dr. Aimee: Menopause is not a dirty word.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: No.
Dr. Aimee: I think of it as me no pause – I’m not pausing in life.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: I literally feel 25 in my head, although my periods have actually stopped many years ago.
Dr. Aimee: Let’s talk about your own experience with early menopause. You do talk about it in your book ‘Finding Me In Menopause’. Can you talk about how your own personal journey informed your decision to write this book?
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Yes. Actually, I was about 38, and I had just started applying for what is known as the top tier jobs in the UK, becoming a consultant, flying solo. I thought I was stressed, I had a young family, I was very busy, I was also being bullied. When I started missing my periods, having always had clockwork periods, despite being an OBGYN, I thought of everything other than menopause. My mother and sister had their periods into their 50s. While family history is important, it’s not the only thing.
Of course, when I did become menopausal, I was not even 39, and it was quite a shock. Having to come to terms with that diagnosis, but also in 2000 what happened was there was a lot of information that came out from the WHI study and the Million Women Study, which basically meant that our family physicians refused to give HRT.
For anybody who is listening, if your periods stop under the age of 40, it’s a medical condition called POI, which is premature ovarian insufficiency. It used to be known as premature ovarian failure, but we are not failures, our ovaries have not failed us, so it’s known as premature ovarian insufficiency. It needs medical specialist input. You can’t just see your family physician, you need to be referred. Up to four women in 100 will actually go through early premature ovarian insufficiency, and one in 20,000 under the age of 20. Between 40 and 45, it’s early menopause.
There are quite a large number of women who are having all of these conditions, and HRT is one of the cornerstones for managing this. But when I should have been given HRT, the guidance had never changed. Anybody under the age of 40 should have had HRT, but family physicians got very scared, and many gynecologists as well. At that time, I was surrounded by male colleagues and I didn’t have the confidence, I had just started my job and I wanted to be the best laparoscopic surgeon, the best everything, you know how it is. In retrospect, they would have actually been very kind to me, but I wanted to prove myself first.
I had to cope without hormone replacement therapy, and I was having panic attacks and anxiety, and all the things. It was good that I had a supportive family, but I really couldn’t share a lot of things with people. I just wish that the book that I have written now was available to me then. That’s one of the driving reasons why I’m active at 62 on social media as well as writing these books when I should be on the golf course.
Dr. Aimee: You still have a lot of work to do. Thank you. A lot of work to educate. Menopause is kind of like puberty, no one teaches you about it when you’re a little girl. All of a sudden, you get a period and you don’t know what’s happening.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: There’s also a lot of gloom and doom. I don’t want it to be doom and gloom. For some people, it can be a very hard diagnosis, especially when you are very young. For the vast majority, it isn’t. I want people to realize that there is life after menopause and there’s a lot of things that you can do. I just want to take away that constant negative thinking. If you think about women in menopause, ones that have hit their 50s, we only use negative words for them until they become a grandmother. Not everybody wants to be a grandmother, not everybody has to be a grandmother. There are so many other things we can do.
Dr. Aimee: I want to talk a little bit about the impact of nutrition and lifestyle. You share that you were not taught about that. I wasn’t really either, the impact of both of those things on illness, as a medical student in medical school. Why do you think it’s taken so long for Western medicine to embrace lifestyle medicine?
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: I think because it’s having the knowledge and having the information, we have had the science. If you look over the last 20 years, there’s so much progress being made. I’m very pleased to see that more and more people, now we have The American College of Lifestyle Medicine, The British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, there are lifestyle medicine colleges all over the world now, and people are realizing the importance.
Before, we put a lot of reliance on pharmaceuticals, which have a definite place, but it’s never too early and never too late to learn about your own health. It’s one thing where the person, the patient, the woman, or you and me are in the driving seat. That means you are controlling your destiny to an extent. In the normal situation, when you are doing your egg transfers or IVF cycles and I’m doing my surgery, I’m in the driving seat as the doctor. In lifestyle medicine, you actually have the patient in the center deciding, “I want to sleep better, and I sleep better, my inflammation reduces, I stress less, when I stress less then I tend to want to exercise and move my body, when I want to move my body, I tend to eat that apple rather than the doughnut, I want to pick up the phone, talk to my friend and have a good laugh and keep away from that alcohol.”
We know that there are six lifestyle pillars, and you don’t have to focus only on nutrition. If you just do one thing, it’s not going to have all of the benefits, but choose one of the lifestyle pillars that you can start with and then slowly develop good habits. You’re not suddenly going to the gym and picking up 150 kilos of weight. You’re going to do your 10 kilos, then 20, and slowly build it up. The same thing with lifestyle changes. Make little positive steps.
Women, sadly, have been told by society we are never too thin. What we have to do is learn to be kind to ourselves. I want people who are listening to this to take away that you don’t do this with judgement. Do it without judging yourself, just like you would talk to somebody that you dearly love. If you do slip off things and you haven’t been to exercise or you’ve eaten the entire chocolate cake, get back on track and start eating those beautiful fruits and vegetables and all the other things that I always advise people to eat to improve their health, reduce their inflammation, improve the quality of their eggs, and reduce their symptoms of menopause.
Dr. Aimee: You talk about the connection between plant-based nutrition and women’s health in your work. What role does plant-based eating play in managing menopausal symptoms, according to your findings?
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: A huge role, actually. When I say plant-based, some people might choose to go completely plant-based, and that can be very beneficial, especially if you are trying to prevent or put them into remission. With menopause, the earlier you start, for example the earlier you bring soy products in, if you eat a handful of edamame beans or a handful of tofu, and I usually recommend between two to four portions for adults. If you are working out quite a lot, have a glass of soy milk, have a handful of edamame beans, maybe some tempeh and tofu. A handful is a portion. There’s no harm if you eat ten portions, but it would mean that you’re not eating those beautiful fruits, beautiful whole grains and beans, and things like that.
We do know that plants contain phytoestrogens, especially soy, chickpeas, and legumes. We know that when you eat those phytoestrogens and you eat plant protein, you will help to prevent loss of muscle mass. You also help to reduce menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes. Try to stay away from ultra-processed foods like chips, cakes, and biscuits that are meant to be treats, not eaten on a daily basis. What happens is you increase something called advanced glycation end products, which actually are called AGES, that basically damage our tissues and our arteries, but they also damage our ovaries.
It’s so important that the more plants you bring onto your plate, when you look down on your plate, you must see color, you must see lots of color. You shouldn’t overthink it. You should crowd out foods rather than thinking this is bad for me, that is bad for me. You bring in things so that slowly the foods that are not bringing you health are pushed out of the plate. Plant predominated, plant-based helps in every aspect of women’s health. If you’re preparing for egg freezing, if you’re preparing for a pregnancy, if you’re pregnant, if you’re menopausal, if you’re perimenopausal, if you’re going through puberty, if you’re having painful periods, if you have endometriosis or adenomyosis. We know that when you eat a diet that reduces inflammation in your body, when you do strength training, you reduce insulin resistance.
We know that these foods will help you optimize your health in every single stage of your life, in all genders, in everybody. I can’t stress enough that the more you can make these little changes, the better. It’s incremental. You don’t have to suddenly jump to ten portions of fruit and vegetables. You can start with one satsuma or clementine, add a bunch of grapes, then some greens, and then slowly build it up. Then you’ll be happy.
I know that in the US soy has very bad press, but I really urge all the people who are listening that it does not affect fertility. In fact, it will help with things. It will help you get a slimmer waist. It will help to improve insulin resistance, heart health, blood pressure, all of the things that can rear their heads, especially for women who are trying to conceive in their late 30s and early 40s, and of course in menopause.
I hope I’ve made the case for bringing in more color and more plants into your diet. There’s a lot of focus on animal protein, but you have to think about protein as very important but where do you get it from, and you want to get it from your soy, from your beans, from many foods.
Dr. Aimee: There’s also a connection with your mood. Talk to us a little bit about that, about the physical changes during menopause and how that affects our mood.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Yes. Mood changes can be there in perimenopause as well. You might think, “Why are my PMS symptoms getting much worse? What is actually happening?” You can go to the doctor, but blood tests won’t show it because one minute your estrogen levels will be normal and the next minute they won’t be, and there is no way of picking that up.
If you are filling your plate with colorful foods, we know that they help to open up arteries and they improve mood as well. Exercise, and exercising in the open, for example, going for a brisk walk or doing strength training, we know helps release endorphins, and when you do that, you tend to prioritize sleep rather than doom scrolling on your phone. With TikTok, we’re all guilty of those things, but it is so important to prioritize sleep because it improves mood, especially in menopause and in lots of women’s health conditions. Women who have painful periods, painful intercourse, difficult relationships, PCOS, sleep can really disturbed, so we have to prioritize sleep to improve mood because background conditions of endometriosis, which is a whole body condition, PCOS, which can cause anxiety, depression, OCD, these are all things that are very common and these women also will become menopausal and perimenopausal.
We know that the way we sleep, the way we stress, the way we eat, the way we interact with other people, we build a positive community. If you have friends around you that drag you down, they’re frenemies, keep them away. Have friends that lift you up. I’m very serious. Friends and family should be there to lift you up, they should not be there to drag you down. If you are somebody who is finding that you’re always not feeling good around people, maybe find some other ways of doing things that will help to lift your mood. It is so important.
Alcohol, we don’t talk enough about alcohol. I know the US probably doesn’t drink as much alcohol as the UK, but alcohol is a real downer for mood. You think it will make you feel much better, but that’s very temporary. It affects your sleep, it affects your mood, it affects menopausal symptoms, it affects perimenopausal symptoms, it damages the ovaries, it increases the risk of breast cancer. One in seven women in the US will get a diagnosis of breast cancer.
It is so important that we don’t look at any of these things in isolation. When people say, “I just do it in moderation,” remember moderation kills as well. There is a safe limit for alcohol and tobacco smoking, so when you do it, do it very mindfully.
Dr. Aimee: Yes. I agree. I think the first thing is sleep, I agree with you. Second is cut out alcohol. It doesn’t have to be completely alcohol-free. I live alcohol-free. Are you alcohol-free as well?
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: No, I’m not completely alcohol-free. If I have a celebration, I will enjoy a glass, but I’m very mindful about it. I feel there are certain things in my control. I hadn’t drunk alcohol until I was 40, so don’t ask me why I started drinking. Especially with all the information coming out, literally, the best amount of alcohol for you is zero. I know I sound like a party-pooper, but it is so important to take this onboard. A lot of people wonder why their symptoms have gotten much worse. As I said, some people can go along and their gut microbiome is able to tolerate eating lots of burgers, coffee, and alcohol. For me, I know if I drink after 12:00, I am finished for the next two days. You have to know your body as well.
Dr. Aimee: You call yourself a party-pooper, I call myself buzzkill, but together with our sparkling personalities, I think we make up for it.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: I love that. I love your sparkling things that you mention in your podcast. So good.
Dr. Aimee: I would like to touch on the work that you did with your daughter, ‘Living PCOS Free,’ because a lot of my listeners are also dealing with PCOS. I’d love for you to just plug your book and tell us more about it.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, is so underdiagnosed. Three out of four women will never get a diagnosis in their lifetime, and it affects at least one in 10 women. Many studies have shown that women who are from the Southeast Asian communities, Black communities, can actually have an incidence as high as 25%, one in four. Those who are struggling with fertility, it’s the most common cause of infertility in women. About eight out of 10 women will also struggle with weight.
It’s a very complex endocrine disorder that is not actually a disease of the ovaries at all. Your listeners will be very interested to hear it’s not a gynecological condition. It is basically hormone changes that occur that work on the ovaries, and as a result insulin resistance often is one of the background conditions, but not everybody has insulin resistance, but your ovaries then react. There are three criteria of which two have to be met.
One of them is missing your period, so long cycles or missing your period for three months is not normal at any stage, unless you are at the extremes of age for a little while, so when you’re just starting your periods or when you are finishing your periods. Otherwise, if you are regularly having 45-day cycles, 50-day cycles, that’s not normal, and that’s because the egg is not getting released. All these little follicles rush to the surface and one queen bee has to be selected, and that one queen bee doesn’t get selected and the egg doesn’t get released. What happens is there is no ovulation, so these cycles go on. Long cycles are a very important symptom.
Then you can have signs of androgen excess, which basically means that the insulin itself can increase the ovaries, making them produce more testosterone in the adrenal glands as well. Women may complain of adult acne, cystic acne, acne on their chest or back. They may have excess hair growth where they don’t want it. They have hair loss. They can have all these symptoms of androgen excess, and sometimes blood tests will confirm that.
Sometimes when you do ultrasound scans, you may see this little pearl necklace type arrangement of these little immature follicles. There are no cysts in PCOS, they don’t cause any pain. If anybody is having painful periods with a PCOS diagnosis, you must look for coexistent adenomyosis and endometriosis. It’s so important to understand there are so many symptoms. Then there are sleep problems, sleep apnea, snoring, and these can be real issues. There can be anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, suicidal ideations, psychosocial dysfunction, intercourse can be a problem, there are so many, weight gain can be an issue, and increased risk of endometrial cancer as we get older.
We know that it’s a very complex endocrine disorder, but I don’t want women to think that their ovaries are diseased. There’s nothing wrong with your ovaries at all. It is a condition which is higher up in the brain, so we can do things through diet and lifestyle as the first line of management. All the colleges will confirm that, including your American College, that eating a diet that reduces your inflammation, plant-based eating, and exercising, strength training, prioritizing sleep, reducing stress and reducing alcohol are big ways that your patients can actually improve their health if they have a diagnosis of PCOS.
Dr. Aimee: Yes. I love that your book is how to regain your hormonal health. It’s really important for people.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: We must get Rohini over, because she will explain things so much better because she’s a nutritionist and she herself has PCOS. When I was trying to write a book, she said, “Mum, why are you writing a book on anything else? I have this condition. I don’t want you writing a general book with two pages on this and two pages on that. Let’s write a deep dive. I want a book because nobody has written about this in such detail.”
Dr. Aimee: That’s true, especially in this way with someone with your background. Before we close, I just want to talk a little bit about some of these myths about menopause. One of the myths are that if you’re in menopause you can’t get pregnant. I specialize in creative family-building. Women feel like if they’ve stopped their periods, there are no more options for them. Tell me about some of the myths surrounding perimenopause and menopause.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Women can get pregnant, but the fertility levels are very low. That does not mean that you shouldn’t be using contraception if you don’t want to have children. It’s important to understand that once your periods stop and you are under the age of 50, you have to use contraception for at least two years because there is a chance that you might get pregnant. However, women should not be under the impression that it’s easy to get pregnant like you would in your 20s. For people who have this family history, who have been fortunate enough to find out what their grandmother, mother, or aunt went through, it is useful to have that knowledge so they can be informed. Maybe I need to start building my family much earlier.
In menopause, we know that if your periods stop after the age of 50, you need to be using contraception for a year because it is a retrospective diagnosis. You may ovulate and you may get pregnant. Same thing with POI, premature ovarian insufficiency. Not everybody is completely infertile. We would assume that the ovarian reserve is very much reduced, so one should not be waiting for that. But, yes, that’s a big myth that you can never get pregnant. It is important to build that up with the caveat.
There’s also this other myth that it’s all doom and gloom and you’re never going to have a life again. That’s wrong. The last thing I want to say is that it’s not just hot flashes and night sweats. They may be the common symptoms, but there are plenty of different symptoms described. It’s important to persist. Sometimes your health professional may not be knowledgeable. Even with PCOS, they don’t join the dots. You go to see the dermatologist for skin conditions, you may see a dietician for weight loss, and nobody is really talking to each other.
As the patient, I want to empower you to say, “I am going through perimenopause,” or, “I am going through menopause,” or, “I may have PCOS.” That is important because there are so many myths and often you will get sent away. There are lots of good doctors around, empathetic health professionals. Sometimes you have to see two or three people until you find the right person.
Dr. Aimee: What’s wild for me is sometimes patients see so many doctors, it isn’t until the see an acupuncturist that their acupuncturist is the one that connects the dots and then they say, “Go to Dr. Aimee.”
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: We have this notion that knowledge is only the jurisdiction of doctors, but actually we have health professionals in so many different fields. Somebody who is willing to listen, somebody who takes a good clinical history, that’s all you need. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist for this. I just want people to realize that it doesn’t matter where you go for that help, but ultimately end up seeing Dr. Aimee or somebody who is actually going to help you.
That’s why I also have for people who don’t want to buy my books, I want you to direct them to my website because I have about 50 different fact sheets, all free. They don’t have to pay anything at all. It’s NituBajekal.com. They can go on there, listen to your podcast, they can see the teaching materials, recipes, but also on all the women’s health conditions that we talked about today and many more. I do want people to realize because not everybody wants to buy a book. I think it’s important that the website is something where they can all go and pick and choose whatever they want to learn about.
Dr. Aimee: Absolutely. I’ll be sure to include the website in the show notes for those listeners who want to go there, we’ll make it easy to find. I love that you say this isn’t rocket science. That’s what I tell my patients, too, this shouldn’t be rocket science. These conditions have existed forever. If you just put the symptoms, believe it or not, into ChatGPT that you have, ChatGPT might make the diagnosis for you a lot quicker than the doctors that are just looking, for example, at your skin.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: It is important for us to educate people so they can actually recognize the symptoms as well. I have a whole chapter in both books where I tell women what are the questions you should go ready with. You should not be thinking at that point, “When did my last period come? What is my menstrual cycle? What are my medical notes?” Have all of that and be that annoying patient with a big list of questions. It’s your body. Nobody loves your body better than you. You have this one body and you should look after it and make sure that you get the best out of it.
Dr. Aimee: Absolutely. Having your own records is so important. Patients think for some reason that I have access to every single doctor that they’ve ever seen, but that’s just not how the world works.
Dr. Bajekal, you certainly are magical. I am so glad that the universe brought us together and connected us so that I can continue to have you on my show. We will be doing this again. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you would like to share?
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: I just have to say I always share your stuff on my website, on my social media, Instagram and TikTok, because I know that so many can’t talk about many of the things they’re going through. All of my patients, any of my fertility patients that I get, I always tell to listen to The Egg Whisper Podcast and make sure you follow her. I love it.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you. You’re the best.
Dr. Nitu Bajekal: Definitely have Rohini over, because I think your listeners will benefit.
Dr. Aimee: I would love to meet her. Thank you for joining me.
