Last week I found myself watching a documentary with Davina McCall on Menopausal madness and nodding……. a lot.

Although the word menopause may inspire some to exhale loudly and walk the other way it is still worth knowing more about. Why?

50% of you are already knee deep in this delight or will be one day. The other 50% will undoubtedly at some point find themselves face to face with someone who is losing things, forgetting things and shouting at you a lot. So be wise, listen up and if you are the ‘other 50%’ be thankful (well a bit).

So whether this is you or someone you know, these are some of the things you can expect to happen.

• You or the other person may forget anything that happened more than two minutes ago, may lose things and in general do crazy things. This week I found orange peel in our laundry bin. I must assume I was the one that mistook the laundry basket for a bin since it was me that tried to put the cereal in the fridge last week.
• You or the person going through the menopause will feel moments of rage never experienced before. Think PMT * 100. Forget Mike Tyson or the Incredible Hulk. They are no match for a menopausal woman in the midst of a rage attack. Perhaps I should sign up to that SAS dares wins and channel my anger.
• It can lead to a lack of confidence and increased anxiety.
• Sudden acute awareness of hormones. You have moments when you think ‘oh and there you are…..’ (the voice of Jennifer Saunders in Absolutely Fabulous springs to mind).
• Interrupted sleep. Ah what must it be like to actually sleep through an entire night? I don’t remember the last time I did that. So you or the other person will be a walking zombie for around 5-10 years. No biggy.

So how do we deal with all of this? Well if I had the answer to that I would be a millionaire but below are some things I’ve learnt so far.

• Well there’s the medication route of HRT or natural supplements
• Eating well
• Exercise (of course I would say this!)
• Finding a new goal or purpose. Perhaps one your younger self didn’t have time for.
• Look deep into the abyss of those things that make you anxious or scared and do them anyway. Either this will do wonders for your confidence or you will fail spectacularly and have an amusing story to tell.
• Accepting it and learning to work with it. I find going off to read a book when I cant sleep quite therapeutic.
• Talking to others who are going through the same thing.

I’m sure there are more things that help but I’ll leave the reader to come up with more suggestions.