“When I was going through menopause, I felt literally like I was going to die every single night,” said Oprah Winfrey.
Oprah Winfrey is speaking out to save other women from suffering in silence. In her upcoming Hulu special, Winfrey will explore menopause and its various impacts on women.
“When I was going through menopause, I could not sleep for two years. I could not concentrate. I could not read my favorite books. I had heart palpitations. No one told me about this. Now we’re talking about it, so no woman suffers,” she wrote on Facebook.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), menopause is a stage of a woman’s life when her menstrual periods stop permanently, and she can no longer get pregnant. However, this natural decline of a woman’s reproductive hormones can cause an array of symptoms that are unique to every woman. For Winfrey, the symptoms became so intense that she had to stop leading her popular book club.
“The worst part for me, this is when I knew I was really in trouble, is when I couldn’t concentrate reading. I love reading so much, but I let go of the book club because I could not concentrate when I was reading. I could no longer finish a book,” Winfrey told ABC News. “I brought [the book club] back when I started taking estrogen because I could concentrate again, but I actually never shared that before, that the real reason I had to stop it is because I could no longer concentrate. It makes me want to cry.”
However, Winfrey did not experience any of the common menopause symptoms like hot flashes or night sweats. Instead, she dealt with heart palpitations, which she didn’t know were symptoms of menopause. While society is used to speaking about menopause in jest, like when Clair Huxtable shoved her head in the freezer when she was experiencing hot flashes, the conversations surrounding menopause are almost non-existent. This explains why Winfrey was unaware of the possible symptoms and why she’s now using her Hulu special to shine a light on the topic and encourage women to seek medical advice sooner.
“When I was going through it, there was nothing. There was nobody. I felt literally like I was going to die every single night,” she said, explaining how it took her two years to realize she was experiencing menopause. “Because it affects every cell in your body, the first time you have any of the symptoms, that’s when you need to go find a doctor who will listen to you, hear you and take action for you.”
“An Oprah Winfrey Special: The Menopause Revolution” airs tonight at 10/9c on ABC and streams tomorrow on Disney+ and Hulu.
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