Pause Lumiere

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Pause Lumiere, Medical and health, Castle Hill Medical Centre, Murrumba Downs.

Dr Emily Watters
GP 👩🏼‍⚕️ Perimenopause & Menopause
Founder of Pause Lumiere, F2F & 📞
Helping women navigate the Pauses with better health than when they started ✨

18/03/2026

If you feel like your whole personality has shifted in Peri, you’re not alone. Irritability is one of the most common symptoms I see, because during perimenopause, several hormonal changes affect emotional regulation.

Fluctuating estrogen destabilises serotonin, dopamine, and GABA signalling, while also increasing stress reactivity through the HPA axis. At the same time, progesterone levels often fall as ovulation becomes less consistent. Progesterone and its metabolites normally have calming effects on the brain through GABA receptors, so lower levels can reduce emotional buffering.

Sleep disruption also plays an important role. Insomnia and fragmented sleep reduce cognitive capacity and emotional tolerance, making it harder for the brain to regulate frustration and stress.

The combination of hormonal signalling changes and sleep disruption can lower the threshold for irritability.
Naturally, many women with existing PMS and PMDD will also find that these conditions worsen in perimenopause as well.

Importantly, managing sleep and our other tools to regulate like exercise and mindfulness will help. Appropriate MHT will too!

09/03/2026

Meet Rachel! Mum let me interview her for the ‘gram, despite being very unfamiliar with Insta.

Mums story is very familiar - though she had clear Estrogen deficiency symptoms in her early 40s, she put a lot of other symptoms down to life stress. She had a bad experience with her first round of HRT, and wasn’t with a provider who could individualise it for her - so she stopped, and suffered through night sweats and hot flushes for another 15 years.

A few years ago, in her early 60s, she started body-identical HRT and her symptoms have completely resolved. Unfortunately, despite being a legend on the tennis court and pretty active otherwise, she was markedly osteopenic after almost 20 years of low Estrogen and only a couple of years back with hormone. She’s starting jump therapy, vitamin D/k and calcium to get those bones strong! It’s always always worth screening EARLY for conditions like osteoporosis and heart disease, even if you don’t have a family history - prevention is better than treatment.

Luckily, mums got awesome muscle mass and low visceral fat to help prevent disease long term.

You’re never too old for HRT, suffering is optional. Individualising treatment is so important for quality of life and disease prevention.

Shout out to mumma bear!

06/03/2026

Women have been managing themselves and others since they were kids. The cognitive burden can be huge! Hormonal shifts from perimenopause onwards can make this exponentially harder, which naturally women will take on as a personal failing.

It’s not. New strategies may need to be employed, while managing the symptoms hormonally … at-least one of those strategies is telling those who lean too heavily on you to f*ck off!! While not forgetting trying to sleep, exercise, drink less and eat well 🫠😂

25/02/2026

Perimenopause is the highest-risk life stage for new-onset anxiety — higher than the postpartum period in several large cohort studies.

This risk is driven by hormonal variability, not simply low estrogen… and not by an antidepressant deficiency!

Fluctuating estrogen alters serotonin and GABA signalling, increases HPA axis sensitivity, and amplifies stress reactivity. Poor overall sleep and REM sleep loss snowball this effect.

For some women, this presents as:
• new anxiety without prior history
• panic symptoms
• early-morning waking with a “wired” feeling
• intrusive or catastrophic thinking

This is a recognised neuroendocrine phenomenon — and it is treatable. The most effective treatment for a hormonal problem is … *drum roll* … hormones!

You do not have to suffer. This anxiety is not because you’re doing something wrong or “not coping”.

If you’d like to know more, or to start exploring your own perimenopause or menopause journey, visit Pause Lumiere.

We can’t wait to meet you!

23/02/2026

Mood variability can be one of the most challenging symptoms of the Pauses, because it’s incredibly hard to control and often affects those we love the most - causing a guilt cycle which only worsens mental health. Lucky, appropriate treatment can help!

19/02/2026

Cortisol and cortisol levels are a common question raised in clinic. Cortisol is such an important hormone for our overall function and wellbeing, though when it’s dysregulated it can become problematic.

16/02/2026

So many women who come to Pause notice that activities don’t feel the same any more - whether it’s how much energy they have for their morning walk, how they’re performing or recovering in the gym, or even how easy it is to go up the stairs at home.

Unfortunately, symptoms of perimenopause and menopause can really bite you in the a$s at a critical time to preserve muscle, bone and general fitness and ability. It’s not common that someone in clinic has maintained the same fitness as they had in their 20s and 30s. This reflects both hormones but also the demands on a woman in 2026 from work, kids, partners and parents - exercise is often the first thing to go. Sadly this leads to a faster decline of VO2 max, meaning a faster loss of independent living and the ability to participate in a full life.

Never has the phrase “if you don’t have time to be healthy, you definitely don’t have time to be sick” been more applicable. Exercise is one of your biggest levers at ensuring you’re able to ENJOY your 60s onwards, and it’s never too late to start. Knowledge is power, find out what your VO2 max is at with 20% with the code WATTERS.

If you’re motivated to stay out of a nursing home but are finding your symptoms challenging, or you’re not sure where to start, visit Pause Lumiere. Can’t wait to meet you!

15/02/2026

VO₂ max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise and is one of the strongest physiological predictors of lifespan and healthspan. It is WILD that professional athletes are the only cohort getting theirs regularly tested.

Your VO2 max is an incredibly valuable metric, because it can be improved at any age and provides insight into what your 80s might look like with your current behaviour.

To live alone, you need to be able to dress yourself, carry groceries in from the car, and get in and out from the shower. As a possible grandparent, you also probably want to be able to play with the kids. All of these activities require your body to utilise oxygen. If your VO2 max is lower than what’s required for these activities, you will be physically unable to do them. This is a guaranteed ticket into a nursing home and early death as a low VO2 max is associated with significantly increased all-cause mortality. Improving from the bottom 25% of VO2 max for your age to below average reduces mortality risk by ~50%. Improving to above average reduces risk by ~70%.

The good news is that VO₂ max is highly trainable at any age!

Endurance training studies in adults aged 63–64 show 19–22% improvements after 9 months.
Structured intervals (e.g. 4 minutes hard with recovery, repeated) are particularly effective.

Unfortunately, we aren’t accessing this information about our future very often, and are missing out on data that could change our later decades.

Because this is so important, has given my patients 20% off their VO2 max testing with the code WATTERS.

Knowledge is power and what you measure, you can manage. If you want to talk about how to improve your VO2 max and manage your health span, visit Pause Lumiere. Can’t wait to meet you!

06/02/2026

During perimenopause, cortisol rhythms often lose their normal day–night pattern.
Instead of peaking in the morning and falling through the evening, cortisol may remain elevated or rise overnight.

Hormonal variability makes the nervous system more sensitive to stress signals, which is why behavioural anchors and intentional parasympathetic activity become increasingly important.
Consistent routines help the brain predict safety, while deliberate down-regulation supports recovery.

When daytime stress signalling is stabilised, sleep becomes deeper, night waking reduces, and next-day energy and emotional regulation improve.

If you’d like to know more, or to start exploring your own perimenopause or menopause journey, visit Pause Lumiere. We can’t wait to meet you!

05/02/2026

Continuing the trend on “sleep bullsh*t women have to put up with”, let’s have a look at estrogen and sleep!

Estrogen plays an important role in stabilising REM sleep — the stage of sleep critical for emotional regulation, memory consolidation, and cognitive processing. REM sleep happens for most people in greatest density after about 2am.

This means that if estrogen fluctuates (hello peri), REM sleep becomes lighter and more easily fragmented. This leads to more frequent nighttime awakenings and reduced overnight brain emotional “reset”.

It’s therefore no surprise that research in sleep neuroscience shows that disrupted REM sleep is associated with increased anxiety, lower stress tolerance, impaired concentration, and poorer mood regulation — symptoms many women notice early in perimenopause, often before cycle changes occur. There is a serious snowball effect here too - less REM sleep = more anxiety = more early morning awakenings = less REM sleep!

Luckily, we can do something about this 😉 though for those who have had years of sleep disturbance, we may need to put more work than just MHT in, as cortisol rhythms may need to be retrained.

If you’d like to know more, or to start exploring your own perimenopause or menopause journey, visit Pause Lumiere. We can’t wait to meet you!

03/02/2026

Night sweats are a form of vasomotor symptom — not just “being hot at night.”

As estrogen fluctuates during perimenopause, the brain’s temperature control becomes more sensitive. The thermoneutral zone narrows, so small temperature changes can trigger exaggerated heat responses during sleep.

This is why night sweats often cause sudden waking, a racing heart, and difficulty falling back asleep — even in a cool room.

They are hormone-driven, common, and treatable.

If you’d like to know more, or to start exploring your own perimenopause or menopause journey, visit Pause Lumiere. We can’t wait to meet you!

02/02/2026

Progesterone is intimately related to sleep. Sleep is intimately related to every single facet of our mental health and physical health.

Address

Castle Hill Medical Centre
Murrumba Downs, QLD
4503

Website

https://www.hotdoc.com.au/medical-centres/murrumba-downs-QLD-4503/castle-hill-medical-centre-murrumba-downs/doctors/dr-e

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