I'm thrilled to be living through the menopause revolution - Bryony Gordon

Menopause symptoms can last a decade? What did I do to deserve this fresh hormonal hell? Photo / 123rf

OPINION:

Though I may sometimes give the impression to the contrary, I like to think of myself as a vaguely intelligent human being.

I read at least two books a week, try to write one a year, and have a passing ability to speak French. I can hold my own in a debate about Brexit or Boris Johnson or Bitcoin, and can make my daughter's packed lunch while also plaiting her hair (it's not ideal in hygiene terms, but needs must).

I am, in short, a functional, reliable adult whom you can trust to look after your child, or your dog, or at a push your plants. But ask me what is going on with my own body, and I will draw a complete blank.

A case in point: earlier this year, I wrote a column about suffering from what I thought might be Long Covid. I detailed the endless fatigue, the itchy skin, the inability to focus, and the night sweats that had moved my husband to the spare room.

That day, I was inundated with emails from women telling me it was far more likely that I was experiencing perimenopause. Peri-meno-what? A little bit of Googling enlightened me: this was not a dish served at Nandos, but a life-changing experience most women will go through for up to 10 years before their menstrual cycles grind to a halt.

Ten years! Somewhat naively, I had assumed that the menopause just happened over the course of, say, a couple of weeks, like a particularly bad stay in a quarantine hotel.

Your period would suddenly stop, and in its place you would experience a few hot flushes every now and then, before becoming completely invisible to employers, members of the opposite sex, and the Government.

I wasn't looking forward to it, but I thought it would at least be brief and succinct, perhaps marked by the ceremonial binning of my Mooncup. Now you're telling me that it's going to make me feel like I am losing my mind while lying in a bush of stinging nettles during a heatwave … possibly for an entire decade? What did I do to deserve this fresh hormonal hell?

I don't mind the process so much – it's the lack of signposting to it that bothers me.

Why is there not a National Menopause Service, sending planes up to write about it in the sky – 'YOU'RE NOT GOING MAD, IT'S JUST THE MENOPAUSE!'.

Why do the doctors not tell you about it? Why did nobody post me a leaflet on the occasion of my 40th birthday? If this happened to men, you could be damn sure we'd never hear the end of it. There would be curriculums dedicated to it, statues erected in honour of their sacrifice. But these are wimmen's issues, and wimmen's issues are inconsequential trivia.

This is why, for many many moons, we have euphemistically and quietly suffered "the curse", and later in life, "the change". In short: you are not supposed to talk about periods when you get them, and you're not supposed to talk about periods when you stop getting them, despite the fact they are the basis for all human life. Period.

I will be 41 in a couple of weeks, and for the majority of those years I have taken on the chin the spots, the bleeding, the pain and the violent mood swings. "

I'm just hormonal," I hear myself say every month, and increasingly I want to shake myself and scream: "Just hormonal? JUST HORMONAL? Hormones are the most powerful chemicals known to humankind. There's no JUST about it, love!"

It was good, then, to hear Welsh Labour Party MP Carolyn Harris trying to explain the menopause to Evan Davis during an appearance on Radio 4 this week.

Harris presented her plans for a private "Menopause Bill" to the Commons on Wednesday, in the hope that women in England will be able to get HRT without having to pay the prescription charge, as is the case in Scotland and Wales.

There will also be a new all-party parliamentary group to explore menopause rights, entitlements and education. Harris had been shocked by her experience of the menopause. It involved – like many women – being prescribed antidepressants and sent on her way.

Of course, there are many who believe that the menopause is a natural process that women should get on with quietly. After all, they've been doing so for years without complaint, and the world hasn't wobbled off its axis. But this isn't really true.

Because until the early 20th century, most women didn't live long enough to go through the menopause, life expectancy only really rising above 50 in the 1920s. Before that, women didn't need HRT, largely because they were dead.

A century on, I feel excited to be living through a menopause revolution, as Harris described it this week. Celebrities talk about it, documentaries are made about it, and books are written about it (I have just finished the excellent Perimenopause Power, by Maisie Hill).

At long last, women are talking freely about their bodies. Now, if only I could speak fluent French.

Bryony Gordon is an English journalist who writes a column for The Telegraph UK every Saturday.