You're listening to the Driving Confidence podcast for drivers who want to be calm and confident on the road. We will be sharing tips, stories and advice to beat driving nerves and anxiety and build your driving confidence. Whether you are just starting out as a learner or have had your driving licence for years, if you want to transform how you feel about driving, this podcast is for you. While we're on a season break, we're sharing with you some bonus shorts from an old episode. Normally, we create one short for each episode, for this break, we focus in on one episode in particular, which is episode 73, Anxious Hormones, exploring the links between hormones and mystery driving anxiety, with guest Kate Muir. And we've clipped this into several small shorts, all around five minutes each. This episode is a perfect listen if you are someone or if you know someone who is experiencing symptoms of perimenopause or menopause. I think that was a fascinating conversation with Kate, the. Yeah. So it was again opened my eyes to a few more things that I didn't know about. And. How that relates to what I do as a living as well and ways that I can. Help people become more aware of what's going on. Yeah. And we started with the idea of relax, explore possibilities for mystery driving anxiety, but actually that information that Kate shared with us. Is much, much broader than that. It was all about how our hormones affect our brains and everything related to that. And if our hormones have an effect on our brains, then of course, that could have a knock on effect on to drive in. And Kate mentioned all sorts of things there that we hadn't even thought about the hormones would have implications on. Yeah. We touched on the subject of coordination. Spatial awareness and helping the other one was time. Yeah. So, when the hormones. Decrease. There's got to effect those free. Balances I suppose. Is that a word to describe it? It is all about hormone balance. And so we started off talking specifically about perimenopause menopause, and they go on a, on a decrease, they decline and. I had no idea that that affected all sorts of brain function. So those decrease in hormones, Kate mentioned things like they can cause anxiety. They can cause sleeplessness, they can cause joint pain. As well as affecting things like concentration. Yeah, which is, if you think about driving, you have to concentrate. Yeah. And we also touched on brain fog as well. Didn't we. So. He thought it's I think this is a massive subject. I don't think we've really, we've just touched the tip of the iceberg. Haven't we. Absolutely. Just scratched the surface. Yeah, and for me, it's now. It's totally different. Reasoning behind what people are doing. I think in the car for me. I'm definitely gonna make sure that I mentioned about the program again, make sure people watch that program, that the Davina programs. So there's two of them now. Yeah, there's two about the menopause. And then there's the new one as well about the pill revolutions. So Kate also mentioned. PMs. She mentioned the contraceptive pill and she mentioned men over the age of 50 as well. So all three of those Davina programs. Depending on your age, but watch all three of them. Anyway. And then As a driving instructor, you're working with everybody, so watching all those. Documentaries could be really helpful for you. Giving you some information that perhaps you didn't know. Because I know I'm definitely going to buy the book by Dr. Jeff Foster. Yes. That man alive. So if there is driving instructors, listening to this. You've got read it, have a look, find out. Now the other thing, there was that. Kate wants to know. We were just guessing the three of us, like you said, just now Just scratching the surface. Yeah. Just beginning to think about it, opening up the conversation and the possibilities. And what Kate's really interested in now is, is this a thing, is there a link. So have you been affected, do you have a driving story that you think is connected to your hormones, maybe a decrease in hormones. Or an imbalance in your hormones. We need to find out more. We need to know your stories. So make sure that you follow Kate over on Instagram or Twitter and let her know. We'd also like to know as well. Oh, yes, absolutely. I think that's it. It's important for us as well. Isn't it? I know Kate mentioned, she'd love to know what's actually going on. And is this a thing. Well, we think it is a thing, which is why we've done this series on mystery driving anxieties. Yeah, absolutely. We hope that you found that conversation as fascinating as we did. And we've included all the links for Kate and the books that she mentioned and the Davina programs, they're all in the show notes so that you can find them really easily. Make sure to share this one with anyone else, you know, who may be affected. Or who may be just might find it interesting. Don't forget to press follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player and maybe leave us a five star review. As well, which will really help other people to find the podcast. Let Kate know. Let us know your driving stories so that we can start to look into whether there is a link between driving anxiety and decrease in hormones. And so it was that leaves us to say is until next time, have a great day, whatever you're doing. Thank you for listening. Find out about the different ways that you can work with us on our website www. confidentdrivers. co. uk and begin to transform the way you feel about driving.