OHMYGOSSIP — Holly Willoughby doesn’t want to be “fearful” about the menopause.
The ‘This Morning’ presenter admits she is keen to learn about the menopause – when women stop having periods and are no longer able to get pregnant naturally – because it is her “next phase of life”.
Speaking to Lisa Snowdon on the brunch-time show, she said: “I am sitting here like a sponge, this is my next phase of life, this is coming to me and I want to go into this without being fearful and I think the best way of doing that is to listen to other women, hear the stories, educate myself and learn.
“So I want to hear your story and what your symptoms were.”
Lisa – who works as a roving reporter on ‘This Morning’ – opened up about her experiences, admitting she didn’t know much about being perimenopausal when she was diagnosed.
The 48-year-old star – who turns 49 later this month – said: “Like you, I was 42, I had no idea. I didn’t even know what the perimenopause was! I knew about the menopause – ish – but at school you learn about your periods, puberty, pregnancy, but never was perimenopause or menopause mentioned, so I was completely in the dark and I thought it would happen many, many years in the future.
“But looking back I think the first symptoms were this depression and anxiety, this feeling of being completely out of control and things I’d usually do every day, I couldn’t do, it just felt very strange, I just couldn’t process things.
“And then your menstrual cycle starts changing and becomes really erratic, so some months you just don’t have a period and the next few months you don’t stop bleeding and it’s so heavy and so debilitating you cannot leave the house.
“You can’t go to work for fear of just bleeding everywhere, just awful. And the pain and anxiety that goes with it … and the depression.
“I went to see a gynaecologist and it was never mentioned, ‘Could you be perimenopausal?’
“So when I was 42 the doctor prescribed antidepressants and I took them for about six months, but I just knew it wasn’t what I needed.
“And I was getting these rages out of nowhere, uncontrollable over emotional rages and my poor partner George, he was just like, ‘What is going on?’…”
Lisa was later diagnosed with being perimenopausal, leaving her “quite shocked”.
Last year, Holly reflected on the gratitude she feels about ageing.
She said: “We’re heading towards that kind of menopausal time, skin is changing, hair is changing, body’s changing. Having had a baby, the shape of your body completely changes.
“It’s really important to, rather than look down and go, ‘Oh, my God, look at everything that’s changing, I’m getting older, I’m getting more wrinkles, my t*** are around my knees’, you’ve sort of got to look up.”

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