Tearful Carol: Menopause made me want to die
CAROL Vorderman has revealed that the menopause left her so depressed there were days when she ‘did not see the point in carrying on’.
The former Countdown star, 56, said that if she had not received treatment she doubts she would still be alive, and that her feelings were ‘categorically to do with hormones’.
In a candid interview, the TV presenter added that being a mother stopped her doing anything drastic.
Miss Vorderman, who has two children from her ten-year marriage to management consultant Patrick King which ended in 2000, said: ‘This depression hit me and I don’t use the word depression lightly, this was a blackness where I would wake up – nothing else in my life was going wrong, I’m a very lucky woman, no money worries or nothing like that – and I would wake up and I thought, “I don’t see the point in carrying on. I just don’t see the point in life. I don’t see it.”
‘There was no reason to feel that way and the only reason I didn’t do anything, and I’ve not admitted it before, is because I had two children.’
Speaking on ITV’s Lorraine yesterday, she said the depression in 2015 lasted ‘for a number of months’ and was her only menopause symptom.
‘For two weeks a month I was in the blackest of black situations and then for two weeks it felt like a relief,’ Miss Vorderman said. ‘I thought, “Has this got something to do with the cycle?”.’
She started using a cream that helped regulate her hormones. She said: ‘I booked in to see a professor who deals with bio-identical hormones, as opposed to pharmaceutical – they are made from plants, from yams. You don’t have a massive dose of it but they affect the receptors in the brain.
‘From the moment I took it I have never ever felt that way [depressed]. I’ve been fed up, and at the moment my mum is not well so I’m upset.
‘But there is a reason for all of those things whereas before there was no reason for it and it was absolutely, categorically to do with hormones.’
When asked what she thought would have happened if she had not received the treatment, Miss Vorderman admitted: ‘I suspect we wouldn’t be talking today.’