Welcome to the Urban Wellness blog

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.

When eating struggles resurface in midlife, the conversation is often reduced to weight, willpower or “just cutting back a bit”. For many women in perimenopause or postmenopause, this can feel deeply invalidating and can miss what is really going on beneath the surface - which is where a functional medicine, eating-disorder-informed approach steps in

Gut health plays a key role in perimenopause. As oestrogen declines, the gut microbiome changes—often reducing bacterial diversity and affecting hormone metabolism. This can lead to bloating, constipation, loose stools, and food sensitivities, compounding common midlife symptoms. Understanding this connection helps women support their gut, balance hormones, and ease the physical and emotional challenges of menopause transition.

The Gut-Brain Depression Axis: How Dysbiosis Inflames Your Brain. About 90% of your body's serotonin is produced in your gut—but that serotonin doesn't travel to your brain. It stays in your gut and peripheral tissues, regulating digestion, immune function, and signalling. Your brain makes its own serotonin from tryptophan (an amino acid from protein).

If you've had blood work done showing your thyroid is "fine," but you're still struggling with depression, you're not alone.

Your brain uses more glucose than any other organ in your body - about 20% of all the energy your body produces. But when your blood sugar is dysregulated, spiking and crashing throughout the day, your brain is essentially running on fumes. Over time, this metabolic chaos creates the neurological conditions where depression takes root.

How You Can Rewire Your Brain Away From Chronic Stress - we have broken down some actions you can take to begin to reset the balance.

Deep inside every cell in your body, a process called methylation is happening right now. But when methylation becomes dysregulated you accumulate stress chemicals in your bloodstream, your neurotransmitters don't get cleared properly, your oestrogen backs up, and you feel anxious, depressed, and wired but exhausted.

Cortisol is supposed to be your ally. But when cortisol is elevated chronically, day after day, month after month, it stops being protective and becomes destructive. Chronically high cortisol doesn't just make you feel stressed - it literally rewires your brain toward depression.

7 Physiological Causes of Depression in Midlife Women (That Your Doctor Might Miss)

Progesterone & Oestrogen Imbalance: The Hormonal Depression Trap in Midlife Women. Depression is so common in perimenopause and menopause. It's not a character flaw. It's a predictable neurological response to hormone dysregulation.