Kathryn Thomas has always been open about her health and her fitness journey.
She has now opened up about her experience with perimenopause and going on HRT to deal with symptoms.
She described dealing with lack of sleep, panic attacks and “operating on a half mast”, before making serious lifestyle changes.
Speaking to Dermott Whelan on his podcast The Mind Full, she admitted that she was really struggling a handful of years ago.
“About two years ago, I was 44 and there was so much talk about perimenopause and I just thought, I wasn’t sleeping, zero libido and really kind of frazzled and forgetful,” she admitted.
“I would wake up and without even looking I would know what time it was and I would be awake for the night. I went to a female fertility clinic and talked to a great doctor there and they said, ‘Would you think about going on HRT?’
“And I said, ‘I think I’m a little bit young for that’ and she said, ‘Not necessarily’, and I knew myself that this was a big area for women and not something we should be embarrassed about.”
She went on to describe how at the same time her friend was diagnosed with a serious illness which caused Kathryn to ask, “Why her and not me, why her family and not my family?”
“I remember going to bed one night, I had been to see her in the hospital I was doing what I do, came home, got into bed and I just had a massive panic attack,” she added, explaining she had previously experienced them during college.
“They didn’t continue for me, they were from a time I was partying too hard and working two jobs… but this one really took the wind out of my sail, because I went, ‘Oh my god, where did that come out of?’”
She went on to say: “I went on HRT for six months thinking that was going to change my sleep, putting the no libido, panic attacks to perimenopause. But it didn’t really improve my sleep, it didn’t really improve a whole lot.
“So, that was when I did a whole life sit-down and went, ‘Where am I going? What am I doing? What do I want?’”
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Instead, she realised that she needed to make some serious lifestyle changes.
“I will go to bed now and be asleep by 10pm, put the girls to bed at 8:20pm. Put the phone away try not to doomscroll and trying to get back into reading my book,” she shared.
“I was actually not giving myself enough time… and it’s working for me now I feel more energised and the brain fog, after I stopped taking HRT (it didn’t work for me).
“What actually did fix it was going to bed earlier, figuring out in my head I’m happy where I’m at, going to work with a smile on my face, playing really good tunes and dancing around my own studio.
“Right now I’m glad that I’m feeling, awake, alive and energised because for two years I was operating on a half mast,” she concluded.
