‘Is it hot in here..?’
Is it me or is it hot in here?’ Words I first uttered, in genuine discomfort, during an extremely hot, outside summer broadcast. The grin of recognition that broke out around the hall was warming – which was a pity given the circumstances.
The grin turned into full-bellied laughter from the studio audience and resulted in 3,000 sympathetic letters from people listening at home, thanking me for being brave enough to mention a hot flush in such a public arena.
I have to say, I hadn’t realised until then that the menopause was still such a taboo, to be moaned about in private with one’s best mates, but never shouted from the rooftops. There’s a hidden fear, I suspect, that if we’re open about it, someone will question our right to be out there, fresh-faced and full of ourselves, on top of the job, planning a climb up Everest or rowing across the Atlantic and they’ll send us back where we belong – wearing black in a darkened room, greying, knitting, sliding into cantankerous, brittle-boned senility.
When I became peri-menopausal – the one to two years when you start to feel a bit down and the periods can become erratic and heavy, but don’t stop – I trotted along to the doctor’s to make enquiries. A blood test later, I was told, ‘Yes, you’re clearly menopausal. What do you want, pills or patches?’ And thanks to those with challenging minds who’d gone before, I knew not to accept the medicalisation of my ‘problem’ as a given. I sought other avenues and, crucially, the advice of other women.
In the late 1980s, at the age of 49, one of Britain’s best known and best respected actors, an award-winning international star of stage and screen and now a busy Member of Parliament, missed a period. ‘Jesus Christ’ – her heart flipped over in horror – ‘I must be pregnant.’ A moment of calm consideration convinced her that this couldn’t possibly be the case. Immaculate conception was, she conceded, unlikely. ‘So, that’s it,’ she told herself, ‘the menopause.’
In Glenda Jackson’s case it was, indeed, the menopause, although if this happens to you it is worth having a pregnancy test just to be sure, even if you are past the age when you thought you might still be fertile. Of every 20 women between the ages of 40 and 55 seen in a doctor’s surgery complaining of missed or irregular periods, 19 of them will not be pregnant. Which means, of course, that one of them will be.
One GP, by the way, recently told me how astonished she is at the number of women, even in the 21st century, who come to her surgery in a complete tizzy, complaining of heavier, more irregular periods, or of their sudden absence. They wonder what on earth is wrong with them – and menopause, she says, often never crosses their minds. There are, of course, for most of us, some grotty bits to go through before we reach menstruation-free nirvana. When Glenda Jackson talked about the hot sweats and heavy bleeding she experienced, she pinned down two of the common symptoms of the peri-menopausal period and – in the case of the hot flushes – sometimes of the post-menopausal period too. (Peri-menopause usually lasts for about a year after the last period.) Hot flushes, night sweats and palpitations are thought to be experienced by 70 per cent of women for a year, 30 per cent for five years and five to 10 per cent for 10 years. After an induced menopause, where the ovaries are surgically removed, almost all women will have severe hot flushes, beginning immediately after surgery, regardless of their age.
In a natural menopause, flushes usually begin in the late 40s, but can start earlier and can go on for as little as a year or as long as 15 years – although that’s rare, you’ll be relieved to know. Like adolescence, where the body and the mindset are adjusting to a new reproductive role, the ‘metamorphosis’ can take several years, during which we can learn to accommodate ourselves as new and different kinds of women, with time and energy to follow our own inclinations rather than those of the people who have depended upon us in the past.
Hot flushes generally have a consistent pattern, but manifest themselves differently in each individual. They can last for two to three minutes or up to an hour and can come several times a day or only occasionally (mine came at night, or at a party or an important business meeting). I find a joke, a sweet smile, and a tissue to mop the fevered brow invaluable and much less embarrassing than trying to conceal what’s going on.
Lightweight clothing is essential. Don’t bother with expensive silk shirts, you’ll only ruin them, and I have drawers full of sweaters that I’m looking forward to wearing some time in the future when this inbuilt central heating runs out of fuel and hypothermia sets in. (I just hope they’ll still fit, but that’s another story!)
Glenda Jackson was lucky and, from my conversations with a great range of women, relatively rare, in that her symptoms were quite mild and continued for a short time. Her fellow MP from the other side of the house, Teresa Gorman, says her first indication came in her mid to late 40s, when her memory became very poor. She’s a scientist and knowing the generic names for the plants in her garden was second nature to her. Suddenly she couldn’t tell her Cistus creticus from her Nicotiana sylvestris. She had difficulty climbing the 75 steps in her London town house thanks to stiffness in her knees and hips, and her wrists, in particular, became a problem. She avoided using knives because cutting, chopping and peeling became so painful (sounds like an excuse to bunk off the cooking to me. I had similar problems, and used them to good effect. Luckily, him indoors is a great cook, too.)
Moyra Livesey – Miss May, the flower-arranger, in the original 1999 Rylstone Women’s Institute calendar – said she couldn’t think of words of more than two syllables and became afraid to take an active part in meetings any more as she found herself stuck for simple means of expression.
She remembers one particular gathering of the WI where she couldn’t remember the name of a very close friend and had to nudge a neighbour to ask the ‘dark-haired woman in the green sweater’ to turn around and speak to her. Her night sweats were horrendous and her poor husband would shiver on freezing cold nights as she tossed off the bedclothes. It was, she says, as if someone had turned the heating up full-blast.
While writing my book, I discovered that the timing of the menopause can often be accelerated by traumatic events. Prolonged stress or a life crisis can halt the production of certain hormones, stop periods temporarily or, in some cases, induce an early menopause. Nutrition can also play an important role. As with the anorexic teenager whose periods stop as she starves herself, an older woman who has been undernourished for a prolonged period is likely to become menopausal several years earlier than her fellows and anyone who has suffered severe anorexia is at risk of premature menopause.
Leni Pickles, seen repotting her plants on the April page of the WI calendar, began to have symptoms relatively young, at the age of 42. She was a smoker and she thinks both her mother and elder sister had theirs quite early too, although she isn’t sure. It’s not really something they’ve talked about much.
Most significantly, her husband left her just before she first missed a period. It was a terrible shock. She had three young children: a girl of 16, a boy of 11 and a daughter of four. She had a full-time job as a lecturer at a nearby college of further education and the first thing she knew about her husband’s affair was when he didn’t come home one night. He then announced that he had left her for a woman 15 years her junior. After this her periods became erratic. Looking back, she feels it’s clear that the stress of picking up the pieces of her life as a lone parent may well have been the trigger.
Some women don’t have their menopause until they are in their late 50s, or, in some very rare cases, until 60. Excess body fat can delay menopause as oestrogen is produced in fatty tissues of the body, but this is not necessarily a good thing. An overabundance of circulating oestrogen is thought to increase the risk of some cancers – it’s believed, for example, to be a factor in some breast and uterine cancers. Also, women who have diabetes may experience a later-than-average menopause, again because of higher levels of oestrogen. It’s recommended that, if you are still menstruating in your late 50s, you should have a precautionary check-up with your GP.
Around the menopause and after, some women notice an increased growth of facial hair and a deepening of the voice. For me, the former is one little hair on the right side of the chin – easily dealt with, using tweezers. Any more than that and I’ll be off like a shot to the beauty parlour for epilation. The deeper voice in my case is a professional bonus.
In writing my book, I went in search of a better understanding of what is happening to us physically, what we can do about it and how we can learn to make informed decisions about the best way to act as regards the medical profession, friends, children and partners. Primarily, though, I hope that through sharing our experiences of what we suffer or not, as the case may be, we find some comfort in the fact that we are not alone, that there are various strategies for making ourselves feel better and that these feelings will not go on forever. I think that in an email to me my friend Griselda summed up what I hope I have discovered. Here’s what she wrote:
‘In an analytical frame of mind, one impression is that symptoms are bearable on the way ‘up’ to the menopause itself (has it happened yet? I don’t know, do I?). But things go seriously and dreadfully wrong and much, much worse on the way down. (Perhaps one should think of it as a valley to cross rather than a hill to climb.) The mental impairment, the doubt, the loss of understanding of stuff – that’s what’s so frightening.’
‘Hot flushes’ come nowhere near describing what it feels like. My mother is dead, and so is her sister, who might have told me something about how women in our family deal with this. All I can do is talk out loud about what I think has been completely taboo in public. I tell the gobsmacked men and women that I am menopausal. I say I’m hot, I don’t understand, I’m tired. I explain it is a special spiritual rite of passage, a beginning of a world of understanding they know nothing of. I am even more difficult, exasperating and unreliable than usual and that’s because I am becoming more important. Sometimes I believe it, too. Mostly it’s hard graft.
Is It Me Or Is It Hot In Here? by Jenni Murray, is published by Vermilion, priced £8.99.
Promensil is available from Boots, Holland & Barrett, Amazon, Ocado, Bodykind and other leading chemists: 01403-280860, www.promensil.co.uk
Stratum C products are developed by Forme Laboratories to counteract the effects of the menopause on the skin. Its protect cream and repair serum help to increase your collagen, which reduces wrinkles and helps damaged skin.
Stratum C is available from online stores: 01252-267950, www.stratumc.com
Regenovex restores health to tired joints during the menopausal stage. The product is available in both tablets and a gel and is uniquely formulated using marine oil and Hyaluronic Acid, which is the key component of synovial fluid, cartilage, tendons and ligaments.
Regenovex is available from Rowlands Pharmacy, Pharmacy 2U, ChemistDirect, Life Pharmacy and Amazon: 01355-848484, www.regenovex.co.uk
ReplensMD is a cream that delivers continuous moisture for feminine dryness. It provides relief from a range of symptoms, such as irritation, by sticking to skin cells until they naturally shed.
ReplensMD by Anglian Pharma is available from Boots, Superdrug, Lloyds pharmacy, Amazon and other leading pharmacies, or order your free tester sample on the website: 01256-772742, www.replens.co.uk
Abigail Hattersley
The grin turned into full-bellied laughter from the studio audience and resulted in 3,000 sympathetic letters from people listening at home, thanking me for being brave enough to mention a hot flush in such a public arena.
I have to say, I hadn’t realised until then that the menopause was still such a taboo, to be moaned about in private with one’s best mates, but never shouted from the rooftops. There’s a hidden fear, I suspect, that if we’re open about it, someone will question our right to be out there, fresh-faced and full of ourselves, on top of the job, planning a climb up Everest or rowing across the Atlantic and they’ll send us back where we belong – wearing black in a darkened room, greying, knitting, sliding into cantankerous, brittle-boned senility.
When I became peri-menopausal – the one to two years when you start to feel a bit down and the periods can become erratic and heavy, but don’t stop – I trotted along to the doctor’s to make enquiries. A blood test later, I was told, ‘Yes, you’re clearly menopausal. What do you want, pills or patches?’ And thanks to those with challenging minds who’d gone before, I knew not to accept the medicalisation of my ‘problem’ as a given. I sought other avenues and, crucially, the advice of other women.
In the late 1980s, at the age of 49, one of Britain’s best known and best respected actors, an award-winning international star of stage and screen and now a busy Member of Parliament, missed a period. ‘Jesus Christ’ – her heart flipped over in horror – ‘I must be pregnant.’ A moment of calm consideration convinced her that this couldn’t possibly be the case. Immaculate conception was, she conceded, unlikely. ‘So, that’s it,’ she told herself, ‘the menopause.’
In Glenda Jackson’s case it was, indeed, the menopause, although if this happens to you it is worth having a pregnancy test just to be sure, even if you are past the age when you thought you might still be fertile. Of every 20 women between the ages of 40 and 55 seen in a doctor’s surgery complaining of missed or irregular periods, 19 of them will not be pregnant. Which means, of course, that one of them will be.
One GP, by the way, recently told me how astonished she is at the number of women, even in the 21st century, who come to her surgery in a complete tizzy, complaining of heavier, more irregular periods, or of their sudden absence. They wonder what on earth is wrong with them – and menopause, she says, often never crosses their minds. There are, of course, for most of us, some grotty bits to go through before we reach menstruation-free nirvana. When Glenda Jackson talked about the hot sweats and heavy bleeding she experienced, she pinned down two of the common symptoms of the peri-menopausal period and – in the case of the hot flushes – sometimes of the post-menopausal period too. (Peri-menopause usually lasts for about a year after the last period.) Hot flushes, night sweats and palpitations are thought to be experienced by 70 per cent of women for a year, 30 per cent for five years and five to 10 per cent for 10 years. After an induced menopause, where the ovaries are surgically removed, almost all women will have severe hot flushes, beginning immediately after surgery, regardless of their age.
In a natural menopause, flushes usually begin in the late 40s, but can start earlier and can go on for as little as a year or as long as 15 years – although that’s rare, you’ll be relieved to know. Like adolescence, where the body and the mindset are adjusting to a new reproductive role, the ‘metamorphosis’ can take several years, during which we can learn to accommodate ourselves as new and different kinds of women, with time and energy to follow our own inclinations rather than those of the people who have depended upon us in the past.
Hot flushes generally have a consistent pattern, but manifest themselves differently in each individual. They can last for two to three minutes or up to an hour and can come several times a day or only occasionally (mine came at night, or at a party or an important business meeting). I find a joke, a sweet smile, and a tissue to mop the fevered brow invaluable and much less embarrassing than trying to conceal what’s going on.
Lightweight clothing is essential. Don’t bother with expensive silk shirts, you’ll only ruin them, and I have drawers full of sweaters that I’m looking forward to wearing some time in the future when this inbuilt central heating runs out of fuel and hypothermia sets in. (I just hope they’ll still fit, but that’s another story!)
Glenda Jackson was lucky and, from my conversations with a great range of women, relatively rare, in that her symptoms were quite mild and continued for a short time. Her fellow MP from the other side of the house, Teresa Gorman, says her first indication came in her mid to late 40s, when her memory became very poor. She’s a scientist and knowing the generic names for the plants in her garden was second nature to her. Suddenly she couldn’t tell her Cistus creticus from her Nicotiana sylvestris. She had difficulty climbing the 75 steps in her London town house thanks to stiffness in her knees and hips, and her wrists, in particular, became a problem. She avoided using knives because cutting, chopping and peeling became so painful (sounds like an excuse to bunk off the cooking to me. I had similar problems, and used them to good effect. Luckily, him indoors is a great cook, too.)
Moyra Livesey – Miss May, the flower-arranger, in the original 1999 Rylstone Women’s Institute calendar – said she couldn’t think of words of more than two syllables and became afraid to take an active part in meetings any more as she found herself stuck for simple means of expression.
She remembers one particular gathering of the WI where she couldn’t remember the name of a very close friend and had to nudge a neighbour to ask the ‘dark-haired woman in the green sweater’ to turn around and speak to her. Her night sweats were horrendous and her poor husband would shiver on freezing cold nights as she tossed off the bedclothes. It was, she says, as if someone had turned the heating up full-blast.
While writing my book, I discovered that the timing of the menopause can often be accelerated by traumatic events. Prolonged stress or a life crisis can halt the production of certain hormones, stop periods temporarily or, in some cases, induce an early menopause. Nutrition can also play an important role. As with the anorexic teenager whose periods stop as she starves herself, an older woman who has been undernourished for a prolonged period is likely to become menopausal several years earlier than her fellows and anyone who has suffered severe anorexia is at risk of premature menopause.
Leni Pickles, seen repotting her plants on the April page of the WI calendar, began to have symptoms relatively young, at the age of 42. She was a smoker and she thinks both her mother and elder sister had theirs quite early too, although she isn’t sure. It’s not really something they’ve talked about much.
Most significantly, her husband left her just before she first missed a period. It was a terrible shock. She had three young children: a girl of 16, a boy of 11 and a daughter of four. She had a full-time job as a lecturer at a nearby college of further education and the first thing she knew about her husband’s affair was when he didn’t come home one night. He then announced that he had left her for a woman 15 years her junior. After this her periods became erratic. Looking back, she feels it’s clear that the stress of picking up the pieces of her life as a lone parent may well have been the trigger.
Some women don’t have their menopause until they are in their late 50s, or, in some very rare cases, until 60. Excess body fat can delay menopause as oestrogen is produced in fatty tissues of the body, but this is not necessarily a good thing. An overabundance of circulating oestrogen is thought to increase the risk of some cancers – it’s believed, for example, to be a factor in some breast and uterine cancers. Also, women who have diabetes may experience a later-than-average menopause, again because of higher levels of oestrogen. It’s recommended that, if you are still menstruating in your late 50s, you should have a precautionary check-up with your GP.
Around the menopause and after, some women notice an increased growth of facial hair and a deepening of the voice. For me, the former is one little hair on the right side of the chin – easily dealt with, using tweezers. Any more than that and I’ll be off like a shot to the beauty parlour for epilation. The deeper voice in my case is a professional bonus.
In writing my book, I went in search of a better understanding of what is happening to us physically, what we can do about it and how we can learn to make informed decisions about the best way to act as regards the medical profession, friends, children and partners. Primarily, though, I hope that through sharing our experiences of what we suffer or not, as the case may be, we find some comfort in the fact that we are not alone, that there are various strategies for making ourselves feel better and that these feelings will not go on forever. I think that in an email to me my friend Griselda summed up what I hope I have discovered. Here’s what she wrote:
‘In an analytical frame of mind, one impression is that symptoms are bearable on the way ‘up’ to the menopause itself (has it happened yet? I don’t know, do I?). But things go seriously and dreadfully wrong and much, much worse on the way down. (Perhaps one should think of it as a valley to cross rather than a hill to climb.) The mental impairment, the doubt, the loss of understanding of stuff – that’s what’s so frightening.’
‘Hot flushes’ come nowhere near describing what it feels like. My mother is dead, and so is her sister, who might have told me something about how women in our family deal with this. All I can do is talk out loud about what I think has been completely taboo in public. I tell the gobsmacked men and women that I am menopausal. I say I’m hot, I don’t understand, I’m tired. I explain it is a special spiritual rite of passage, a beginning of a world of understanding they know nothing of. I am even more difficult, exasperating and unreliable than usual and that’s because I am becoming more important. Sometimes I believe it, too. Mostly it’s hard graft.
Is It Me Or Is It Hot In Here? by Jenni Murray, is published by Vermilion, priced £8.99.
Helpful Products
Promensil is a dietary supplement based on red clover isoflavones that helps to maintain good general health during the menopause, as well as bone and cholesterol health.Promensil is available from Boots, Holland & Barrett, Amazon, Ocado, Bodykind and other leading chemists: 01403-280860, www.promensil.co.uk
Stratum C products are developed by Forme Laboratories to counteract the effects of the menopause on the skin. Its protect cream and repair serum help to increase your collagen, which reduces wrinkles and helps damaged skin.
Stratum C is available from online stores: 01252-267950, www.stratumc.com
Regenovex restores health to tired joints during the menopausal stage. The product is available in both tablets and a gel and is uniquely formulated using marine oil and Hyaluronic Acid, which is the key component of synovial fluid, cartilage, tendons and ligaments.
Regenovex is available from Rowlands Pharmacy, Pharmacy 2U, ChemistDirect, Life Pharmacy and Amazon: 01355-848484, www.regenovex.co.uk
ReplensMD is a cream that delivers continuous moisture for feminine dryness. It provides relief from a range of symptoms, such as irritation, by sticking to skin cells until they naturally shed.
ReplensMD by Anglian Pharma is available from Boots, Superdrug, Lloyds pharmacy, Amazon and other leading pharmacies, or order your free tester sample on the website: 01256-772742, www.replens.co.uk
Abigail Hattersley