By Stuart Gillespie

Copyright dailyrecord

A Dumfries -based doctor who is an expert in the menopause has joined forces with an agricultural wellbeing charity. Dr Heather Currie MBE has joined the team of experts at Farmstrong Scotland as it launches a new campaign to coincide with October being Menopause Awareness Month and October 18 being World Menopause Day, The project aims to help the agricultural community better understand the menopause and its impact on farming homes and workplaces, for both women and men, and will include podcasts, stories, blogs and female farmers sharing their personal experience. Dr Currie – one of the country’s leading gynaecologists specialising in the menopause – has helped put together a comprehensive menopause guide covering symptoms and how to support women experiencing the menopause, as well as myth busters and “things men ought to know”. Dr Currie, who is also the founder of the award-winning Menopause Matters website, will also appear on the Blether Together podcast with host Sarah Stephen, crofter Sally Crowe and farmer Lesley Mitchell. She said: “It’s great that these women who are involved in farming have come forward to share their experiences for this campaign, to show that it’s not all about hot flushes. “The menopause is individual to everyone who experiences it; symptoms can be different, lifestyles are different, and the impact is different. It’s fantastic that there’s so much openness about the menopause, it’s not perfect but it’s so much better than it was. “What I do say to men is not to offer solutions. Men like to try and fix things, but this is something they can’t fix. Just be there. It is for each woman to work out herself what to do, but it would be great if men could understand what’s going on and then work through it together, looking at resources together is a great place to start.” Throughout October, Farmstrong will release further menopause related content, including a story with farmer Christine Cameron on her experience of perimenopause through her mid-forties, and her subsequent struggles with strength and forgetfulness. And a nutrition-focused resource will be launched later in the month featuring insights from Dr Laura Wyness, a registered nutritionist and author of Eating Well for Menopause, and crofter Sheila Ogilvie. Click here for more news and sport from Dumfries and Galloway. Farmstrong director, Alix Ritchie, said: “More than a third of the agricultural workforce in Scotland are female, plus countless wives and partners who support farm operations, and 100 per cent of them will at some point go through the menopause. “As a charity focused on health and wellbeing, it naturally appealed to me and the team to open up the discussion on this more specifically to Scottish farming and crofting. “Providing a platform for those peer-to-peer stories to be told and shared with the whole community is so important, and from the responses we’ve had it’s clear that many women in the Scottish agricultural community are willing to have these conversations, and we’re very grateful to all of them for coming forward to help raise awareness for everyone’s benefit.”