Speaking to Lorraine Kelly, TV personality Ulrika Jonsson revealed her fears that she was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s, due to sudden, frequent loss of memory.
The mother of four was relieved to discover her memory loss was instead a symptom of menopause.
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Ulrika appeared on today’s episode of Lorraine, and opened up about her struggles with menopause, and the unepected effects it had on her life.
She claimed she first started experiencing symptoms at 46 – she found herself feeling listless and down, struggling with inexplainable weight gain, memory loss and anxiety.
“Depression has been a regular-ish feature of my life,” she told Lorraine. “I felt like I was going into a very dark episode and I had no warning of it beforehand, there was nothing that would have given me any signs towards it.
“And then came the most unimaginable anxiety that I’ve not known before, like proper panic.”
Ulrika, who was recently a finalist on Celebrity Masterchef, claimed that she put on weight despite swimming frequently and eating only healthy food.
“I just wasn’t putting these things together,” she said, “and then my GP said I could be perimenopausal. And I thought ‘No!’ because I thought this was going to be my time where I’d get my body back after having four children.”
But Ulrika said that the most distressing symptom was the loss of memory: “…being mid-sentence and forgetting the noun or the word was awful.
“I actually took my friend aside and I said to her that I was really worried that I could be getting early onset Alzheimer’s and she said ‘Oh no love, that’s just the menopause’.
“You just think it’s an ageing thing, you go off sex, you put on weight, you think I’m uglier…at least that’s how you feel.”
Ulrika said the support of her family has been key to helping her cope with her symptoms, saying her husband, Lance Gerrard Wright, is “very understanding” about what she’s going through.
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Lorraine said she appreciated Ulrika’s openness, commenting that it’s a subject most women shy away from.
“An awful lot of women don’t talk about it, I don’t know whether they feel embarrassed, or maybe even ashamed, or not quite sure what they’re supposed to say. But for goodness sake, it’s a part of life, isn’t it?