Davina admits scary menopause symptom left her 'paranoid'
Davina McCall has always been admirably open and honest about the impact that menopause has had on her life — both good and bad — including opening up about her struggle with 'shame' around taking HRT.
And now, in a new interview, the TV presenter and fitness guru has admitted that she felt 'paranoid' she had Alzheimer's disease, due to dealing with memory loss brought on by her periods stopping.
Speaking to sport presenter Gabby Logan on her podcast, The Mid.Point, Davina explained how her fear stems from the fact that her 76-year-old father struggles with the progressive brain disorder (though uncommon, it causes the deterioration of cells in areas of your brain that control body movement, coordination, thinking and other important functions).
'I'm on HRT [hormone replacement therapy, which replaces depleted oestrogen in the body] so I have absolutely no excuse to be going doolally but I'm still going doolally on the HRT,' she said.
As a result of being on the medication Davina admitted she was 'less angry. I don't get night sweats. I don't get hot flushes. These are the things that have gone. My joints feel, my bones feel lubricated and strong, but my memory, and like you Gabby, I work, I've got kids, I have a partner.
'Life is very busy and chaotic and you have to know a lot of stuff in your business about sort of everything. And I do lots of different jobs. So I have a hundred different hats on. I could be going from Long Lost Family one day, to The Masked Singer the next, to a Garnier job, to something else.
'And I'm learning different things for everything in my brain sometimes, because when I went to my doctor and I said, "Look, please help me, I think I've got Alzheimer's" because obviously my dad's got Alzheimer's. And I was like, "I'm always paranoid – I know I haven't really got it, but am I okay?" to her.'
After going to see her doctor, Davina was told that, instead, she has 'cognitive overload' (when the demands placed on your brain by too many tasks are too great for everything to be processed).
'She said, "It's called cognitive overload". And at our stage in life often our kids are all older. We thought it was going to get easier. It does not.'
Listen to the full Mid.point podcast here
But why does memory loss sometimes occur with menopause?
A leading neurologist says memory loss and brain fog is common during perimenopause and menopause.
This is because the drop in oestrogen impacts the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that helps with memory and speech, and is home to lots of oestrogen receptors. That means when your oestrogen levels dip during menopause, this area of the brain isn't getting the hormone which it has long relied upon and has to adjust to a new way of doing things.
'I’ve actually had patients misdiagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease when really it was menopause-related brain fog,' Gayatri Devi, M.D., a clinical professor of neurology at SUNY Downstate Medical Centre and an attending physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told US site Prevention.
For information on perimenopause and menopause visit the NHS website or visit your GP if you're struggling any of the issues mentioned in this feature.
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