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The Laura Dowling Experience

The Laura Dowling Experience

Laura Dowling 180 Episodes Jul 2, 2026

Conversations about health, science, wellness, life, love, sex and everything in-between. Laura is a Pharmacist who loves to talk to interesting people about their unique life and work experiences.

Episodes

Heavy Bleeding, the Mirena Coil and Speaking Up with Dr Áine Dempsey #176 Jul 2, 2026 41:02 How many women quietly put up with heavy bleeding, painful periods or a difficult coil fitting, telling themselves it is just part of being a woman?In this episode, Laura sits down with obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Áine Dempsey, who works at BlackRock Women's Health and at the Rotunda, for an honest, practical conversation about the things women are so often told to live with - and what can a
A Generational Story Behind Women & Dieting with Aimee Donnellan #175 Jun 25, 2026 1:00:29 Aimee Donnellan joins Laura to talk about her new book Off the Scales: The Inside Story of Ozempic and the Race to Cure Obesity, and the much bigger story sitting underneath it - how generations of women learned to live with food.Through interviews with women across the world, Aimee found the same pattern repeating. A trip to a dietitian around the age of seven. A mother quietly carrying her own d
Grief, Poetry and a New Kind of Masculinity with Darragh Fleming #174 Jun 18, 2026 1:06:15 Darragh Fleming went viral last year for a poem — but this conversation is about everything that came before it. The Cork writer talks to Laura about a childhood spent lost in books, a long detour through sport and self-doubt, and the years he spent convinced he wasn't creative at all.At seventeen, Darragh lost his close friend Irby to suicide, and the grief changed him profoundly. For years after
Why So Many Women Suffer in Silence with Dr Fadi #173 Jun 11, 2026 50:16 In this episode, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Fadi joins Laura for an open, practical conversation about pelvic floor health, incontinence, prolapse and the realities of modern obstetrics.Dr Fadi explains how childbirth, ageing and menopause affect the pelvic floor, and why so many women end up living with stress incontinence, prolapse and faecal incontinence in silence. He walks t
Bitesize Moment: "She Wasn't Lazy. She Was Drowning." — Dr Sarah Carty on ADHD in girls Jun 9, 2026 6:43 In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, GP Dr Sarah Carty explains why ADHD looks so different in girls and women — and why so many only recognise it years, sometimes decades, after it first showed up.She tells Laura how the "quiet" presentation — daydreaming, internal restlessness, working twice as hard to look fine — slowly turns into anxiety, perfectioni
What Menopause Care Should Really Look Like with Dr Caoimhe Hartley #172 Jun 4, 2026 57:46 What does proper midlife care actually look like, and who keeps getting left out of it?In this episode, Laura sits down with Dr Caoimhe Hartley - founder of Menopause Health in Dalkey, clinical lead of the Complex Menopause Clinic in the Rotunda, and clinical lead for women's medicine at the new BlackRock Health Women's Health Centre.They talk about the women being told no - those over 60 who feel
Bitesize Moment: "We Cured Your Cancer. You Should Be Grateful." — Dr Deirdre Lundy on HRT after breast cancer Jun 2, 2026 7:35 In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, menopause specialist Dr Deirdre Lundy walks Laura through how decisions about HRT and family history of breast cancer actually get made in clinic — and why a blanket "no" rarely tells the full story. If you've ever been handed that flat refusal, this is for you.She unpacks the difference between "a family history" and
Pamela Deasy | Trusting Her Gut: A Pancreatic Cancer Survivor Story #171 May 28, 2026 52:58 Pamela Deasy was in her early 40s, working full time and volunteering with the RNLI, when fatigue started dragging her back into bed in the middle of the day. Her bloods were clear. She was told it was perimenopause, then depression. Months passed before a kinesiologist, of all people, pointed at her pancreas — and within days she was in a Cork hospital being told she had a tumour.In this episode,
Bitesize Moment: "The Second Christmas Nearly Broke Me." — Dr Mary Ryan on grief May 26, 2026 6:01 In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, endocrinologist Dr Mary Ryan opens up about losing her husband unexpectedly while raising three small children, and what grief actually looked like for her in the years that followed.She tells Laura about the shock, the anger, and the long fog of those first two years — and the small, practical things that helped: lea
Caroline Foran | The Nervous System, Anxiety & PDA Parenting #170 May 21, 2026 1:08:12 Anxiety author Caroline Foran joins Laura for a deeply personal conversation about parenting a young son recently diagnosed as autistic with a PDA profile, alongside her own long history with anxiety.Caroline talks openly about the years before the diagnosis, the blame she turned inward, and everything she has had to unlearn about parenting. She explains what PDA — Pervasive Drive for Autonomy — a
Bitesize Moment: "I Thought I Was Fine. I Wasn't." — Kyla Cobbler on getting sober May 19, 2026 6:04 In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, comedian Kyla Cobbler shares an honest, no-frills account of how her drinking quietly turned into dependency — while she was still training, working, and gigging five nights a week.She tells Laura how being a regular performer in Barcelona blurred the lines between socialising and self-medicating, and how Dry January
Barbara Scully | The Things They Don't Tell You About Getting Older #169 May 14, 2026 1:30:07 Barbara Scully sits down with Laura for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with her own recent run-in with the medical system and opens out into what it actually means to age as a woman in Ireland today.Barbara talks about months of hip pain, a string of MRIs, a suspected stroke that turned out to be nothing, and the moment she decided to step off the treadmill of tests, hand back the prescri

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