DRWF Women and Diabetes interviews: Opening up the conversation about type 1 diabetes and the menopause with midwife Dawn Adams
The DRWF Woman and Diabetes series welcomes Dawn Adams, a midwife living with type 1 diabetes, who experienced issues of early symptoms of menopause.
At the heart of this project is a simple but powerful belief: every woman living with diabetes deserves to feel seen, heard, and supported.
Across the UK, women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes navigate a lifelong journey shaped not only by their condition, but also by the many milestones and challenges unique to womanhood – from adolescence and pregnancy, through menopause, to later life.
Alongside managing blood glucose levels, they balance careers, family, relationships, and their own health and wellbeing.
Yet too often, these experiences are underrepresented in public conversations about diabetes.
Many women tell us they have never heard a story that truly reflects their own – and that lack of visibility can leave them feeling isolated, misunderstood, or unseen.
The Women and Diabetes podcast series aims to change that.
Dawn Adams is a midwife, married with four grown up boys, and who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 22.
Dawn said at the time of her diagnosis, “I knew virtually nothing about diabetes. As I discovered in the hospital, I had very classical symptoms. I was losing weight, I was so thirsty I could not quench my thirst. I think I was drinking about 8 to 10 litres of water per day prior to being admitted to the hospital. I was constantly running to the loo and I had people saying, if you didn't drink so much water, you wouldn't need to run to the loo. But I said, I have to drink. I am so thirsty.
“My weight had gone from eight stone to five stone, nine lbs in the space of about three months, and I was so tired I just could not shake off the fatigue.
“I was very involved in the guide association, and I had visited Sheffield for a bike weekend with the British Youth Council. My then boyfriend, now husband, picked me up from the airport and said, "have you been drinking whiskey on the plane?" I said, "no, I have not." He said, "I think you might have type 1 diabetes," because a friend of his was diagnosed in their first year at high school, and he had recognised the smell of ketones from my breath. Immediately that triggered memories of his friend being diagnosed with type 1. So, I contacted the GP the next morning and by lunchtime I was in hospital with a full-on diagnosis of type 1 diabetes.
“When we arrived at the front of the hospital, the sister of the ward was standing at the front door with sweat on her brow. She looked at me and said, "Are you Dawn? I have an ambulance on standby waiting to collect you. We thought you were dead." That was not quite the welcome that I was expecting. She then brought me in and said, "We have been genuinely worried. We know that you are really very ill, and if you had waited any longer, you would not have been coming in to us. You would have been going to one of the local mortuaries.” So that was my introduction to what type 1 diabetes meant and what it was all about at its very worst.”
Dawn described symptoms of menopause from her late 30s: “I noticed that my insulin requirements were changing. I thought that may be simply to do with becoming older. But I found that my mood was not as good as it had been previously, and I think it was whenever I started to have hot flushes, which I know we think of as a very traditional symptom [of menopause], that came for me about the age of 45, 46.
“I was waking up and my pyjamas were soaking most nights, I was having to get up, shower and change bed linen, change pyjamas. I thought, there is something else going on here. This is not just hypos (hypoglycaemia, or low blood glucose levels). I was checking blood glucose levels. What is happening? I tried to read into it, but there is very little information about type 1 diabetes and menopause. I couldn't find anything that was specific to type 1. There was more about type 2 potentially being caused by menopause.”
DRWF: Do you think there is a link between more aggressive menopause symptoms and having type 1 diabetes?
Dawn: “I think there is confusion of symptoms between what is a hypo or what is a hyper (hyperglycaemia, or high blood glucose levels). Because when you are hypo you do sweat. You do become very teary, very emotional. Emotions are very heightened. There is fatigue after hypo. Those are things which seem to sit very much in that menopause space, whenever you look at the balance symptoms of menopause, and an awful lot of this is stuff that I experience anyway with type 1 diabetes.
There is a feeling of heaviness and that you have really let everybody around you down because you have not managed to keep your glucose levels within that optimal target range and the fatigue that goes with that as well. The brain fog that quite often sits in the type 1 diabetes space as a result of rollercoaster glucose levels.
“So many of the symptoms completely overlap, and loss of libido would be another thing which again, we know that happens with women with type 1 diabetes. It is not particularly well researched, but there are a couple of very good recent PhD papers that have shown decline in libido in women with type 1 diabetes over a period of time. It just made so much more sense that it wasn't simply the diabetes that was the cause of it, and the fact that it was. A lot of those symptoms were suddenly fixed with additional hormones suddenly made sense.”
The DRWF Living with Diabetes women's health podcast series is supported by Abbott
Launched to coincide with World Diabetes Day (14th November), the DRWF Women and Diabetes series brings together inspirational women from diverse backgrounds who live with diabetes, to share their life stories in their own words.
We explore how they navigate the different stages of life while managing their condition, and the strategies they use to minimise its impact and live fully.
Sarah Tutton, DRWF Chief Executive, said: “At DRWF, everything we do is grounded in compassion, credibility, and collaboration. We actively listen to the voices of those we serve, ensuring that our initiatives are shaped by lived experience and respond to real-world needs. In doing so, we aim not only to inform and support, but also to inspire hope and positive change within the diabetes community.”
Watch all videos at the DRWF YouTube channel
Listen to the interviews in full as part of the DRWF Living with Diabetes podcast series here
Read more DRWF Podcasts: Launching the Women and Diabetes interviews series for World Diabetes Day
Read more about type 1 diabetes
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