POSITIVITY and motivation were the main messages an Olympic gold medallist hoped to bring to the Island at a speech delivered to mark World Menopause Day.
Former track athlete Sally Gunnell won gold in the 400-metre hurdles at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, as well as claiming the World and European Championships.
Her recent talk, which was organised by Vitality40plus and sponsored by SG Kleinwort Hambros and Accuro, took place at The Royal Yacht hotel.
World Menopause Day raises awareness of the menopause and options available for improving health and wellbeing.
Mrs Gunnell said that conversations around the menopause seemed to have changed in the last few years. She said: “It’s probably only three years ago that you got people like [TV presenter] Davina McCall doing a programme on it, one of the first sort of real strong messages that came across.
“And then, having some strong doctors like Louise Newson and people like that, I think that has made a big difference. And then celebs getting behind it.”
She added: “It was brilliant, everybody was like: ‘that’s why I feel like that.’”
Opening up the conversation helped society move on from bad press around hormone replacement therapy, a treatment used to relieve symptoms of the menopause, and “misunderstood information”.
Mrs Gunnell said there was an increasing awareness among men. “Men understand it, I’ve brought it up with my boys,” she said.
She described a lifelong journey of adapting to her body changing – going from retirement to perimenopause within ten years.
“You sort of twig: ‘Oh that’s why I’ve had a red rash when I was doing Question of Sport or in a stressful situation.’”
Mrs Gunnell described never having felt like this before, even worrying about her mental health after having seen her mum go through mental-health issues.
“Probably, a lot of my mum’s mental health would have been because of her menopause.
“She’s 91 – back then, they would not even have linked it whatsoever.”
In Jersey, it is “Mrs Menopause” Trudi Roscouet who has been essential to opening up the conversation on menopause, founding online coaching platform Vitality40plus and The Menopause Forum, both of which raise awareness and encourage conversations on menopause.
Mrs Roscouet campaigned for female employees over 45 to receive menopause-specific health checks, a change a number of Island companies agreed to making.
