Begin Again Moments: Owning Your Menopause

Begin Again with Davina McCall

Penny Lancaster and Natalie Imbruglia join host Davina McCall to candidly discuss their personal experiences navigating perimenopause and menopause. The conversation explores how severe

Key takeaways

Penny Lancaster describes experiencing extreme hot flushes she compared to being in a cauldron or on trial for witchcraft during lockdown with her teenage son.
Lancaster was initially prescribed antidepressants by a doctor who lacked menopause training, which only numbed her emotions without addressing the root cause.

Main topics

Perimenopause and menopause symptoms
Medical misdiagnosis and HRT

Notable quotes

"I think they were menopausal. I think they were menopausal."

Conclusion

The episode provides a vital, empathetic roadmap for women navigating

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Can I ask you about when you found out you were perimenopausal? Because there'll be many listeners here at that stage of their life, or they will know someone a bit like you were saying they'll either be a partner of or a work colleague of. Because it was really interesting, your journey, because it was... Speaker 3 (0:17) misdiagnosed. Could you just tell us what happened? It was Speaker 2 (0:20) compounded by quite a few different factors. Speaker 2 (0:26) I mean, we all know that when we go into the hormone journey, that's at our adolescence when we're teenagers. So my son was a teenager. It's Speaker 3 (0:35) classic, isn't it? Speaker 2 (0:36) I was coming out the other side, losing my hormones. He was gaining them and I was losing them. We were two trains on a track heading towards each other. It was like just blowing up. But then we'd be like crying and hugging and making up. And Rod would be like, what is going on with you two? Like screaming and shouting and then you're all cuddling and making up. I mean, yeah, I loved doing all the apologies and hugs afterwards. But the fights were awful. Speaker 3 (1:11) That's a Speaker 2 (1:11) lot, right? I remember, I mean, I had the same thing, the rage to Speaker 3 (1:15) 60. Speaker 2 (1:15) Really Speaker 3 (1:16) terrifying. But Speaker 2 (1:17) then to compound that as well, we were in lockdown. Oh, God, of course, yeah. So then you go, you can't go anywhere. Speaker 2 (1:25) He's a teenager. That's why we're fighting. We're in lockdown. That's why I'm going mad. And then when lockdown first happened, there were no tests, were there? But one of the symptoms was high temperature. Speaker 2 (1:42) Sweating, right. I mean, I've got my hyperhidrosis. I've Speaker 3 (1:44) always had that. Yeah. This is next level though. This was next level. This was Speaker 2 (1:48) this furnace. It was like I was in a cauldron. And I kind of like... Speaker 2 (1:56) Look at it like in the old days when there were witches. Speaker 2 (2:00) And they would burn them at the stake. And there was these crazy, crazy women that were absolute lunatics. But I think they were menopausal. I think they were menopausal. Speaker 3 (2:09) They were Speaker 2 (2:10) all locked up and killed and hung. They were just menopausal, going absolutely crazy. But that heat would just burn all the way up and you would feel it rising like mercury. And you can't do anything about it. Nothing. And you just think, and it was hotter, hotter. And you're thinking, I'm going to combust. How much hotter can I possibly get? And then suddenly it goes. And then it would start down and it would be like, my son, he's 14 now, but he was much older than Aidan. And he would open doors and windows, go get mummy, quick, the breeze is coming, it's coming. And I'd go, here you go mummy, like this. They'd all come round and waft me down. Once we realised that it was this symptom of women of a certain age, we still didn't really know what it was. So that was my first symptoms. But I thought initially I had COVID. But then when I got on top of the covers in the middle of the night, then I turned into an ice block and it was freezing cold. I'm like, well, that's not the symptom, hot and cold. I sound like I've got the flu. But anyway, there was much more important things happening because people are dying and all this. So you just parked. So it was just like, come on, just. be strong, carry on kind of thing. Speaker 2 (3:26) And then it was one day we were in England, all hunkered down together. And it was, you know, that conveyor belt of like breakfast and lunch and dinner. You know, like it was that groundhog day. And the kids were doing homeschooling. And, you know,