Phytoestrogens are plant compounds that can offer gentle, food-based support as your own oestrogen starts to fluctuate and decline. Oestrogen doesn't just switch off at menopause. Through perimenopause, often from your early-to-mid 40s, levels can swing high and low from month to month before settling lower after your final period.

What's Declining and What Actually Helps: Perimenopause is often talked about as one big hormonal event, but it isn't. It's several hormones moving at different speeds, for different reasons, over what is often called the "second puberty": a two-to-ten-year (sometimes longer) transition, not a single switch that flips.

10 Things to support perimenopause. These are the non-negotiables: if you really want to support your body through hormone changes, avoid weight gain, sleep well, reduce anxiety, brain fog, and overwhelm, and reduce hot flushes; make these weekly practices.