The Laura Dowling Experience

Laura sits down with community pharmacist Darragh Connolly, who has built a men's health service — Men's Health Downunder — around something most clinics rush past: helping men get their sexual function back after prostate surgery. It's a candid, frequently very funny conversation about a subject usually wrapped in silence and shame.
Darragh explains the male anatomy in plain (and memorable) terms, why nightly "micro-erections" keep the penis healthy, and what actually changes after a prostatectomy. He walks through how a penis pump works, what constriction rings are for, and why this isn't only for men who've had cancer surgery — smoking, diabetes, spinal injury, certain medicines and simply getting older can all play a part.
Running through all of it is a hopeful message: a prostate diagnosis or surgery is not the end of sex, intimacy is far more than penetration, and men well into their 80s can still enjoy a full sex life. Darragh also makes the case for meeting men's sexual health at the pharmacy counter, not only the consultant's clinic.

🔑 Key Points

Sexual health is health — and still taboo
There's deep shame and silence around men's genitals and sexual function, and Darragh's whole approach is to demystify it, often with humour, so men actually seek help.

Micro-erections keep the penis healthy
Men have around five micro-erections a night that bring blood, oxygen and nutrients to the tissue; without them it's "use it or lose it", and the penis can shrink and lose function.

Erectile dysfunction has many causes, not just prostate surgery
Ageing, smoking, diabetes, lower-back trauma, spinal injury and some medications can all affect erectile function.

How a penis pump actually works
Used for five to ten minutes a day, it draws blood into the penis like training a muscle, improving vascular and nerve health over time.

Constriction rings let men maintain an erection for sex
Paired with the pump, a constriction ring traps blood to hold an erection for penetrative sex — but should never be left on more than six to eight minutes.

A prostate diagnosis is not the end of sex
With the right tools, men who hadn't had an erection in months or years can have penetrative sex again — and intimacy is always more than penetration.

Know the warning signs of prostate trouble
Dribbling, a weak stream, going more often (especially at night) and "stage fright" can point to an enlarged prostate; Movember is a good place to learn the signs.

📚 Resources

Men's Health Downunder
Darragh Connolly's Irish men's health service and the surgical-grade penis pumps discussed

Movember
the men's health charity Darragh recommends for prostate cancer, testicular cancer and male suicide awareness

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Welcome and sponsor
01:36 — Why a pharmacist is talking about men's health
03:24 — How Darragh got into men's health
04:32 — What a prostatectomy actually involves
07:28 — Male anatomy explained simply
13:48 — Micro-erections and "use it or lose it"
20:55 — How a penis pump works
24:31 — Constriction rings and maintaining an erection
38:33 — The prostate and its warning signs
52:44 — How Viagra and Cialis were discovered
57:00 — Low-dose Cialis, the pump and the post-surgery "void"
1:01:24 — Couples, intimacy and a hopeful note
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, GP Dr Mick Crotty explains why weight is far less within our conscious control than we are led to believe — and why so many people carry a load of self-blame they never deserved.

He walks Laura through the genetics of appetite, the brain's reward response to food, and the "set point" it quietly defends, which is why weight so often returns after a diet. It's a clip that gently takes apart the "just eat less and move more" myth.

🔑Key Points
• Why "just eat less and move more" is an oversimplification
• How genetics and the appetite system shape hunger and fullness
• What the brain's "set point" is, and why weight often returns after dieting
• Why this is a medical issue, not a personal failing

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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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 actually be done about them.

Áine explains what a hysteroscopy really involves, why polyps and fibroids drive heavy bleeding, and when the Mirena coil is the right first step before ablation or surgery. She is candid about pain relief during coil fittings, the six-month settling period, and where the copper coil fits in.

The conversation moves into perimenopause and HRT, smear tests, HPV and colposcopy, and the realities of painful sex, vaginismus and caring for women who carry past sexual trauma. She closes on labour ward life, her own two pregnancies, the magic of epidurals, and why no woman should feel she has to suffer in silence.

At its core, this episode is about taking your own symptoms seriously and making your gynae health a priority.

🔑 Key Points

Heavy bleeding is not something to put up with
changing a pad every hour, bleeding for more than five days, or planning your life around your period all count, and there is plenty that can help.

Flooding is a symptom women rarely volunteer
Áine asks directly because most women never mention soaking through their clothes or sheets.

A hysteroscopy is not as frightening as it sounds
a thin camera and a well-briefed team can investigate bleeding, polyps and fibroids, usually without a general anaesthetic.

You deserve proper pain relief for a coil fitting
from paracetamol and ibuprofen beforehand to numbing gel and a local cervical block.

The Mirena coil takes about six months to settle
bloating, tenderness or mood changes often ease, and it can be used as part of HRT.

HRT is about long-term health, not just symptoms
beyond brain fog and night sweats, it supports heart and bone health.

Painful sex is not normal
whether it stems from low oestrogen, endometriosis or past trauma, there are options that help.

You do not have to suffer in silence
if something is affecting your quality of life, make your gynae health a priority.

📚 Resources

BlackRock Health Women's Health Centre
Hysteroscopy (HSE)
The Mirena and copper coils (HSE)
HRT and menopause treatment (HSE)
Cervical screening and HPV (CervicalCheck, HSE)

⏱️ Timestamps

02:04 - Inside a day at BlackRock Women's Health
03:23 - What a hysteroscopy actually involves
06:21 - Polyps, fibroids and heavy bleeding
09:02 - Heavy bleeding and flooding in perimenopause
10:11 - The Mirena coil as a first-line treatment
13:56 - Pain relief and what to expect from a coil fitting
18:02 - The Mirena as part of HRT, and sleep
20:04 - Mental health support through menopause
22:35 - Smear tests, HPV and colposcopy
24:35 - Painful sex and trauma-informed care
29:18 - Vaginismus, physio and the pelvic floor
33:34 - Her own pregnancies and epidurals
37:56 - Don't suffer in silence
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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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 dieting story, passing it on through Weight Watchers, rice cakes and "don't think cute clothes mean you can come off your diet." For some, GLP-1 medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro have quietened the food noise for the first time in their lives. For others, the more confronting realisation is how differently the world treats them when they shrink.

Aimee also explores how the men in her book relate to their bodies very differently, the rising scale of childhood obesity and the shame attached to it, and why the food industry has barely adjusted to a world where appetite itself is shifting. She and Laura reflect on body positivity, menopause and the pressure women carry at every stage of life, before closing on something simpler - why she thinks the meaning of life comes down to picking up the phone.

🔑 Key Points

1. Dieting often starts in childhood — Many of the women Aimee spoke to were first sent to a dietitian around age seven, framing food as something to manage rather than enjoy.
2. Mothers carry the story forward — Weight Watchers, calorie counting and "good" and "bad" foods pass quietly from mother to daughter across generations.
3. Food noise can dominate a life — Constant thoughts about food and shame-based self-talk shape how many women move through the world.
4. GLP-1 drugs change more than weight — When the food noise quietens, work, relationships, shopping and how others treat you can all shift.
5. Men and women relate to weight differently — Men often seek treatment for health reasons, while women carry decades of body criticism and comparison.
6. These drugs are not a quick fix — Muscle loss, side effects, cost and the reality of injecting long-term are rarely talked about honestly.
7. Childhood obesity is rising — Shame and clinics that don't fit larger bodies stop many families seeking help early.
8. The food industry has barely adjusted — Cheap, ultra-processed food still fills shelves, and meaningful change runs into cost and lobbying.

📚 Resources

Off the Scales: The Inside Story of Ozempic and the Race to Cure Obesity — Aimee Donnellan

⏱️ Timestamps

01:00 — Welcome and the focus of the book
03:00 — Why the dieting story starts at age seven
04:30 — Rice cakes, Hershey's sauce and a mother's diet
06:00 — Sarah's first Wegovy injection
07:00 — Losing 70 pounds and a life that changes overnight
12:00 — Menopause, microdosing and Ozempic on the black market
14:00 — Body positivity, celebrity bodies and the shift back
22:00 — Plateaus, muscle loss and life-long drugs
28:00 — A Mars executive on a pharma board
36:00 — How men relate to their bodies differently
41:00 — Childhood obesity, shame and small clinic rooms
44:00 — Food deserts and the cost of real change
56:00 — Picking up the phone and choosing connection
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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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 afterwards he felt almost nothing — a numbness he didn't recognise as depression — while quietly performing the emotions other people expected of him. He's honest about the survivor's guilt that made him sabotage his own happiness, the panic attack that became his rock bottom, and how therapy and journaling slowly led him back to writing.

From there the conversation opens out into the work Darragh is known for now: poetry that reimagines what it means to be a man. He and Laura discuss why anger is so often the only emotion men feel allowed to show, how language like "toxic masculinity" can shape the way boys see themselves, and why he believes emotionally healthier men make life safer for everyone. Warm, funny and full of hope, it's also a conversation about creativity in everyday life and Darragh's belief that the meaning of life is found in the people we share it with.

🔑 Key Points

Grief can arrive as numbness, not sadness
After losing his friend Irby at seventeen, Darragh didn't feel constant sadness but a flatness he didn't recognise as depression for years.

Survivor's guilt can quietly sabotage a life
He describes an unconscious sense that he wasn't allowed to be happy, which led him to undo good things whenever they started going well.

Writing became a way back to feeling
Journaling suggested by his therapist turned naturally into poetry, helping him name emotions he otherwise couldn't reach.

Anger is often the only emotion men feel permitted
Darragh argues that sadness, rejection and disappointment frequently come out as anger because men aren't given other outlets.

Language shapes how boys see themselves
Hearing "toxic" almost always paired with "masculinity" can lead young men to believe masculinity itself is something bad.

A lighthouse, not a lifeboat
Rather than trying to rescue everyone, Darragh sees his public work as showing people a way through and reminding them they're not alone.

Success can arrive at the right time
He reflects on being glad his career didn't take off in his twenties, when he wouldn't have been ready to carry it.

📚 Resources

Thoughts Too Big — Darragh's long-running mental health blog

If I Ever Have Boys — Darragh Fleming

If I Ever Have Girls — Darragh Fleming

Waiting for the Good Guys — Darragh Fleming

The Hole — Darragh Fleming, a poem on depression and coping

Dangerous Men — Lucas Jones, the poem Darragh's "If I Ever Have Boys" responded to

Mental health support — Samaritans, freephone 116 123; Pieta, freephone 1800 247 247 or text 51444

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — "My Dad Could Beat Up Your Dad" (cold open)
01:13 — Welcome and introduction
05:40 — Going viral with "If I Ever Have Boys"
14:53 — Why he started writing
17:31 — Losing Irby at seventeen
18:42 — The numbness he didn't know was depression
21:45 — The panic attack, therapy and journaling
33:35 — A lighthouse, not a lifeboat
35:23 — Masculinity, the manosphere and raising sons
42:42 — Language, mental illness and "toxic masculinity"
50:30 — "A Snake Named Snake" and his dad
01:01:36 — Darragh reads "My Dad Could Beat Up Your Dad"
01:03:09 — Advice for young people and the meaning of life
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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