Lorraine Kelly is convinced she was having menopausal symptoms years before she started having treatment.
The 61-year-old TV presenter suffered from extreme tiredness, and it was her husband Steve Smith who realised she might be going through the menopause and urged her to seek some medical advice.
She said: "I'm sure that I was having symptoms years before I realised.
"In fact, to be honest, I didn't even really realise, it was my husband that said to me, 'You have to go and get some help,' because I was extremely tired.
"This is probably about nine years ago, I was sort of late 40s, early 50s I think, and I was just ever so tired, didn't have any energy."
Lorraine admitted hormone replacement therapy (HRT) "was a life saver" for her, as she recalls feeling "flat" and "joyless" before she sought help.
She said: "Flat, I think the best way to describe it. Joyless, joyless is another good way to describe it. And I didn't really understand it, it just kind of crept up on me, and I didn't know what it was."
But now, Lorraine feels she has "more energy" than ever before despite some of the dated stereotypes that woman are "over the hill" when the menopause comes calling.
And she has urged women and men to speak more openly about the menopause.
She added to Mail Online's Femail: "Even five, six years ago, it wasn’t something that was out there. [People] would just not ever talk about it, because it was like you get the menopause, 'Oh that’s you then, you’re over the hill. That's it, you know, you might as well just give up, you're going to be invisible.'
"And how ridiculous is that when women in their 40s 50s and 60s and 70s and beyond are in their prime.
"I certainly feel like that, I’ll be 62 soon ... but I feel now that I’ve got more energy, I’ve got more time for me, there's lots of things that I can do.
"And if you look upon it as almost a sense of freedom because you don't have periods anymore to deal with."
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