Some well known women have used their fame to get the conversation about menopause out to a wider audience. Click on the names below to read about their story.
| o | Lisa Snowdon |
| o | Mariella Frostrup |
| o | Davina McCall |
| o | Oprah Winfrey |
| o | Carolyn Harris, HP |
| o | Sophie, Countess of Wessex |
Lisa Snowdon has staged live chats on Instagram with Dr Naomi Potter and made TV appearances discussing the impact of the menopause on her life.
She’s talked about the “madness” that is her brain. Her symptoms included fatigue, anxiety, change of cycle, weight gain, anger, rage, acne, hot “flashes” and even cold flushes! Lisa has taken an open and honest approach to talking about menopause.
A link to her Menopause Madness chat held on Instagram in March 2021 can be found here.
Lisa has chatted to TV legend Lorraine Kelly discussing when things first started for her. She pointed out she noticed “low mood, depression and anxiety” about 7 years ago. For her “…it definitely did creep up on me. It wasn’t like a definite pinpoint – like the actual day I knew I was going into the perimenopause”.
Mariella Frostrup has written a book (co written with health journalist Alice Smellie) entitled “Cracking the Menopause while Keeping Yourself together”.
The book itself, at 240 pages, has good reviews, with Waterstones giving it 5/5. One reviewer said it should be issued to every woman in their late thirties.
Mariella is Chair of the Menopause Mandate. Together with other like-minded women that share an interest in perimenopause and the menopause, the mission of the Mandate is to “…achieve everyone’s ultimate goal of revolutionising the support and advice women receive from both our health service and wider society.”
Click here to watch Mariella give an interview to Sky News in August 2022 as she describes how and why the Mandate is trying to get menopause talked about in UK parliament.
Davina McCall presented Channel 4s “Sex, Myths and the Menopause” with a follow up programme discussing the impact of menopause on the mind.
The programme is massively informative. Davina attempted to kick start the open conversation about menopause without the need for shame and embarrassment. Throughout, she talks about her own menopause experience, which started at the age of 44. Davina said she was unable to sleep one night and woke up the following day feeling she’d “aged 10 years”. She was “frustrated…tearful…angry”.
The programme talks to real life women to hear their stories and commonly hears how some GPs misdiagnose menopause symptoms for depression. It also talks about HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) which Davina candidly shared that she’s now taking, whilst admitting that a couple of years ago she couldn’t even tell her friends it was something she used. The programme also attempts to remove the link from a damaging report 20 years ago that said HRT increased the risk of breast cancer. The legacy of damage caused by this headline inducing report still means that today, only 1 in 10 women take HRT despite the ongoing importance of oestrogen the progesteron in our bodies as we age.
A Royal rather than a celebrity, Sophie, Countess of Wessex stated “it’s like somebody’s just gone and taken your brain out for however long before they pop it back in again and you try and pick up the pieces and carry on.” (Independent article published in May 2021).
For full article, click here.
Oprah Winfrey https://www.oprah.com/spirit/what-oprah-knows-for-sure-about-menopause-and-hormones
https://www.oprah.com/health_wellness/oprah-reveals-how-she-realized-she-was-approaching-menopause
Carolyn Harris, MP.