I would really love women to feel empowered... to take control of their health

LIZ EARLE has a “really strong feeling of injustice” at the way midlife and older women are treated.

- with PRUDENCE WADE

Through her work in the wellness space, the writer and entrepreneur - who set up her eponymous beauty brand in 1995, before selling it in 2010 - says she's discovered that women are “hungry for information” about their own health.

“There seems to be this real lack of care and attention for midlife and older women,’ says Liz, 62.

“They're disadvantaged in so many ways - there’s a huge [amount of] gender discrimination that goes on for women generally in healthcare, in terms of lack of research and funding, and then when you factor in ageism on top of that.

“Women, older women in particular, are really dealt a short straw, and I have a real strong feeling of injustice for that.”

Mother-of-five Liz, who splits her time between London and the West Country, suggests that the expertise of women like her is often dismissed.

“It's frustrating because particularly women who write about wellness, which is my job, we're seen as a little bit of flimflam on the side;’ she says.

“I’m sometimes dismissed as a mere influencer, when I've been writing about health and wellbeing for 40 years.

“I’m not a doctor, I’m not an academic, but I am a researcher, and I do talk to a lot of different doctors and academics, who work on a very high level on the global stage, and try and translate that information, bring it out of labs and ivory towers into real life.

“Because we can’t wait, we don’t have the time to wait. We don’t have the luxury. I’m in my 60s, and they say it's around 17 years for an idea to come out of the lab and into a home environment. I haven't got 17 years to wait.”

Liz has written more than 35 books, and her latest, How To Age, was inspired by her research into turning back the biological clock.