Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Menopause took me to a very dark place
Ulrika tells of struggle
ULRIKA Jonsson has spoken of her battle with the menopause and revealed the memory loss it caused made her fear she had Alzheimer’s.
The 50-year-old TV presenter began having symptoms four years ago, suffering anxiety, weight gain and forgetfulness.
Ulrika has suffered depression over the years and feared she was set to have another bout when her menopausal symptoms first began.
She said: “I thought I was going into a very dark episode and I had no warning of it beforehand.
“Then came the most unimaginable anxiety. Anxiety, like, proper panic – at one stage I thought my head was going to explode.
“I had anxiety over the tiniest thing. So that was the sort of start of it.”
The mum-of-four also noticed “a little bit of weight gain” even though she was still exercising – swimming 6km every week – and eating healthily.
Speaking on Lorraine as part of The M Word campaign, she said: “I just wasn’t putting these things together. Then my GP said, ‘I think you’re probably peri-menopausal, it’s probably starting’. “I was like, ‘No,’ because I was 46, and I thought that this was my time to have my body back after having four children.”
The former panellist on Shooting Stars and finalist on Celebrity Masterchef said memory loss was an unexpected symptom.
She said: “That was really scary, being midsentence and forgetting the noun or the word. I actually took a friend aside and said, ‘I’m really worried I might have early onset Alzheimer’s’. She said, ‘Honestly, it’s just the menopause’.”
After that was confirmed by a GP, Ulrika told her family, wanting to explain “why I’m being a little bit strange”.
TV PRESENTER