Welcome to the Urban Wellness blog

For many women, a difficult relationship with food and body image started long before midlife. Here is why that history matters when GLP-1 medications make eating less feel effortless.

Weight often shifts to the middle in midlife, even when nothing else has changed. Here is what ageing, falling oestrogen and muscle loss are doing to your body, and why the scales cannot tell you your metabolic health.

If you are taking Wegovy or Mounjaro, stopping may be the last thing on your mind. Here is what the research says about appetite and weight after GLP-1 medications stop, and the support that matters most.

Many women on GLP-1 medications such as Wegovy or Mounjaro say food suddenly takes up far less space in their head. But quieting food noise is not the same as understanding it, and that difference matters.

Ferritin of 30 or below can mean your iron stores are low even when you are not anaemic. New US guidance puts this distinction back in the spotlight, and it matters for women in midlife and after menopause.

Ferritin is the marker that tells you what's actually in your iron stores, not just what's circulating in your blood right now. It's also one of the most misunderstood results on a blood test, since both a low reading and a high one can be telling you something important, and they don't mean the same thing.

If your thyroid results keep coming back normal but you still have every symptom of an underactive thyroid, fatigue, low mood, weight changes, cold hands, low iron could be part of why. Your thyroid needs iron to actually make and use its hormones, and this link rarely gets mentioned.

Being told your bloods are "normal" doesn't always mean your iron is where it needs to be for you to actually feel energised. There's a real gap between not being anaemic and having enough iron on board, and that gap is where a lot of unexplained fatigue lives.

Iron isn't just about energy, it's one of the raw materials your brain uses to make the chemicals behind mood, focus and motivation, which is why low iron so often shows up as low mood or brain fatigue before it shows up as anything else. We see iron issues come up again and again in clinic, usually because someone's bloods came back "normal" but they still don't feel right (remember normal doesn’t always mean optimal for that individual). Understanding what iron actually doe

You're eating well, moving your body, maybe even already in therapy, and your mood still isn't shifting the way you would expect. Here are six places worth looking that are easy to miss, because no single one of them tells the whole story on its own.

If you have been offered antidepressants for low mood in perimenopause, without anyone assessing your hormones, your nutrient status, or your sleep, there are some things worth knowing before you decide.

Mood swings, crashes, and cravings are often blamed on stress or hormones, but blood sugar is frequently the missing piece. There are more ways this gets disrupted day to day than most women realise, and this is how it all connects, and what actually helps.

Feeling emotionally flat in perimenopause is common, and it is not the same as clinical depression. Several interconnected body systems are involved, and understanding them is the first step to doing something about it.

Your gut and your brain are in constant communication. Not metaphorically, but through direct physical pathways that affect how you feel, how clearly you think, and how resilient your mood is. In midlife, when hormones are shifting and stress is often at a peak, this connection becomes even more important. Here's what the gut-brain axis is, and what it means for your mental health.

Low body weight is almost always framed around one thing: wanting to lose weight, or relate to an eating disorder. The narrative is so dominant that when someone is underweight for entirely different reasons, they fall into a gap. They don't fit a typical ‘underweight’ profile, and they often, don't get the right support.

Perhaps you have been on antidepressants for a while and are considering coming off of them, or maybe you’ve tried titrating down only to experience significant side effects. This is one of the most common conversations I have with midlife women, and something I tell every single one of them, is that you need to have good foundations in place before you even start reducing your medication. Let’s explore this further.

Folate (vitamin B9) plays a significant role in mood, brain function, and mental wellbeing throughout life. Midlife women are one of the groups most likely to be low in it. In this post we look at why folate matters for your mental health, why many women aren't getting enough, and why the synthetic version you'll find in most supplements is not a reliable substitute.

PCOS is being renamed PMOS, something that as a functional medicine clinic we support. It is a much better descriptor for what is actually happening in the body. In this article we explore more about what PMOS is, how it can affect your mental health, but also what you can do support your wellbeing

We often think of bile as simply a digestive fluid, something that helps break down fats after a meal. But emerging research is revealing a much broader role. Bile acids are not just digestive helpers; they are powerful signalling molecules that interact with the gut microbiome, influence inflammation, and may even shape brain function.

Oestrogen gets SO much attention when it comes to women’s health, especially in perimenopause and menopause. Of course it is a really important hormone, but it gets far more airtime than its sister hormone, progesterone. Progesterone is one of the most important – and most overlooked – hormones when it comes to midlife mood, anxiety and sleep.