Toral Shah: We Need More Diversity In Healthcare

For the 12th episode of Period Story Podcast, I was honoured to speak with Toral Shah. Toral is a nutritional scientist, functional medicine practitioner, food & health writer & consultant and the founder of The Urban Kitchen.

Toral shared how a family holiday to Egypt ended in a surprise from her first period and how supportive her mum was. She says her mum had made sure to educate her about menstruation beforehand, so when it arrived, it wasn’t a complete shock.

She said her mum’s openness helped her see her period and menstrual health in a matter of fact way, which was quite different to her friends.

Toral shared her experience of medical menopause after her breast cancer treatment. She shared the side effects she experienced and how she believes more needs to be done to help women with the side effects of breast cancer drugs.

Toral says that more women need proper education on what menopause and perimenopause actually is and how it can affect them. She says that many doctors aren’t educated in menopause, unless they have specialist menopause certification and believes this needs to change.

We also had a great discussion about the lack of diversity in healthcare, health and wellbeing. Toral talked through research by Dr. Adrienne Milner that shows that BAME community isn’t being represented effectively at consultant levels, which means that they aren’t necessarily being reflected in policies and structures.

Toral says that we need to listen to ourselves, our bodies and give ourselves what we need and I completely agree!

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Show notes and transcripts can be found at

http://www.periodstorypod.com

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Website:

https://www.theurbankitchen.co.uk

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