“I consider myself a woman of the world and I didn’t know what being perimenopausal was,” says Meg Mathews, the former music PR. But since launching a blog about the menopause in 2017, she has become a prominent campaigner on the subject.
Mathews believes the subject is not discussed as much as it should be. “We need to talk about the menopause as loudly and as much as we can because we have to get past the stigma and shame our society places on the menopause,” she says. “We have to break the taboo.”
Now 53 and on hormone replacement therapy, Mathews started going through her menopause at 49, although she now thinks she was perimenopausal in her early 40s. It hit her hard, but she had no idea what was going on.
“The only thing I knew about the menopause was hot flushes and no more periods – but I wasn’t getting those two symptoms,” she says. Mathews later found out through her own research that she had been suffering 32 of the 34 lesser-known symptoms of menopause, including burning mouth, mood swings, problems sleeping, hair loss and low libido. Her GP prescribed her antidepressants to no effect.
The menopause is a natural part of ageing and usually occurs between 45 and 55 years of age after levels of the hormone oestrogen have declined to the point where ovulation and menstruation stop. It is defined as a woman going 12 months without a period. In the UK, the average age for a woman to reach the menopause is 52. However, about one in 100 women have their menopause before the age of 40.
Common symptoms can include hot flushes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and discomfort during sex, a reduced sex drive, low moods or anxiety and difficulty sleeping. Memory and concentration can also be affected.
Symptoms can begin months or years before periods stop – this time is called the perimenopause – and can last around four years after the last period. However, some women have them for much longer, with 10% experiencing symptoms for up to 12 years.
About 25% of women experience such severe symptoms that they can be diagnosed with mental health problems. The principal treatment is hormone replacement therapy, which can control symptoms well, but does increase the chances of breast and ovarian cancer.
“I had crippling anxiety, fatigue, headaches, night sweats and aching joints. I was so flat – not depressed but flat. I was riddled with nausea, my breasts hurt. My joints were so inflamed; I used to be able to get up and do a downward dog [yoga position] but I was walking to the bathroom like an old lady.”
“But I couldn’t tell anyone: my mum had recently died, so I couldn’t talk to her, and we all know about ‘Meg Mathews’ rock and roll lifestyle’,” she says, referring to her reputation as a fixture on the 1990s Britpop party scene – she was married to Oasis’s Noel Gallagher for four years. “I thought it had all caught up with me,” she says. “I told everyone I had glandular fever and didn’t go out of the house for three months.”
Then, at an AA meeting, she stood up to tell the room that she thought she was going mad. “A woman approached me afterwards, saying that I wasn’t going mad; I was having my menopause. I went to an NHS menopause clinic, which I didn’t even know existed, and the light switched on. I was like, ‘Oh God, I have had all those years feeling like this – why isn’t it talked about?’”
Making sure the menopause is talked about has become one of Matthew’s driving forces. In 2017, she started a blog about the menopause. It features articles and Q&As from menopause specialists, real-life experiences – including her own – and lists of products Mathews says have helped her.
“I’m not interested in helping the 3% of women who can afford to go to Harley Street and buy expensive supplements,” she says. “I want to help women fill their weekly shopping basket with genuinely affordable products that will really help them.”
The blog has been a runaway success, with a million visitors in its first six months. “I’ve held two conferences in London with a range of the country’s best specialists talking on a wide range of topics. For the second one, in May this year, the tickets sold out,” she says.
Mathews has given talks in unlikely places, including at the Foreign Office’s services division: “They opened the phone lines to every embassy and Commonwealth office around the world so that they could listen in, too,” she says. “It went so well that they invited me back to their main office in Milton Keynes to talk to their employees there.”
She has spoken at the British Library and the BBC, and is in discussions to speak at another government department.
This, says Mathews, is just the start. “I want to take my conferences nationwide,” she says. “I want to help women create a sisterhood network, like Weight Watchers, where they meet weekly in a village hall-type setting to discuss their symptoms and swap advice because many women don’t have anyone to talk to – we’re in a bubble in London. I have learned everything just through my network of women.”
Mathews plans to lobby the government for trained nurse practitioners to act as the first port of call for women experiencing menopausal symptoms – and to persuade writers of soaps to include a menopause storyline.
“There have been storylines about paedophiles, rape, murders and drug addiction, LGBT issues – but they have never had Bet Lynch behind the bar having a hot sweat,” she says. “Soaps play a pivotal role in helping to start conversations within families on a national scale. So many women probably don’t know how to explain to their husbands what’s going on. But if it was on a TV show as a storyline, it’d be ‘look at what’s going on in EastEnders, she’s got the menopause!’”
