Cracking the Menopause: While Keeping Yourself Together

Product Information

I inhaled this book, it's fantastic. Women of all ages need to read it. It's genuinely helped me understand why I wake up at 5 a.m. and made me laugh along the way. -- Claudia Winkleman It’s high time we renovated and elevated this life change. Despite the centuries of speculation and propaganda, we are not overheating or inherently cold, we are not hysterics or boiling vats of toxic poisons, we are not dried up or washed up, we are simply menopausal. Overall I would say the beginning of this book is a helpful exploration of menopause but for details of the full range of symptoms and an inclusive way of managing them, I would suggest you look elsewhere, although our search for that may be continuing. This book is nothing short of revolutionary! Finally, some validation for women who've been swirling around aimlessly seeking answers in tomes of patriarchal gibberish. This book arrives at exactly the right time; a guidebook for that stage in life, previously only surviving in shadows and whispers. MENOPAUSE, at long last: a badge of honor. -- Naomi Watts

And if the authors are right about magnesium spray for calf pain. They will get another 2 stars. (when I went to the doctor her 'helpful' advice was, "we all get aches and pains as we get older"!!!) Mariella Frostrup is one of the UK's most respected broadcasters and columnists. Her contribution to arts and literature along with her advocacy on gender and social issues have placed her at the forefront of the cultural landscape. She made the groundbreaking BBC1 documentary The Truth About the Menopause and she currently presents her own daily show on Times Radio covering issues of the day, from arts and culture to politics. She lives in Somerset with her husband and two children. What I particularly like is that lifestyle is given just as much spotlight as hormone replacement therapy. Mariella talks about how she’s upped her exercise to support the impact HRT has on helping prevent osteoporosis, for example, and like many of us, grimaces when she remembers the amount of partying she’s done in the past when she thinks about the risk now of breast cancer. A groundbreaking, no-holds-barred guide to the menopause - that combines a passion to enlighten and inform as well as entertain - from inimitable broadcaster, writer and campaigner Mariella Frostrup and award-winning health journalist Alice Smellie. If you want to discover all the answers to your most burning menopause questions (no pun intended), then keep listening...

With thanks to NetGally.co.uk, the publisher and Mariella Frostrup and Alice Smellie for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is an intelligent, well-researched and comprehensive book that will get you rethinking what the menopause it and what life looks like during and after it. Starting with a fascinating account of how our views about the menopause have been formed over centuries (largely by men), we start to understand why there are so many preconceptions and misinformed views in society. There were many parts like this, where I found myself nodding along. Have they been spying on me? However… Mariella Frostrup has done much over recent years to try and bust some myths around the perimenopause and the menopause. This book brings together what her quest (so far) has found. I thought it was an interesting and straightforward read, with Mariella's usual style and flair.Menopause is the dark matter of modern medicine, until now almost totally neglected. This book shrugs off generations of silence and stigma. It's confessional, scientifically accurate and extremely funny. It's for anyone who will experience the menopause themselves or who knows someone who will . . . so that's basically everyone. -- Dr Chris van Tulleken

This friendly, feisty book has all the myth-busting facts, tactics and strategies we need to sail through menopause and not just survive, but thrive. -- Alice Hart-Davis, founder of The Tweakments GuideThis meticulously researched book looking at all aspects of the stages of the menopause (before, during and after) is told in a frank and often very sarcastic manner, which took a bit of getting used to, but I enjoyed by the end. Mariella Frostup gives her personal experience in each chapter, but they also include the voices of lots of different women, and some men, and this helped to show how diverse an experience it can be. There is so much information here, that it can be a lot to take in, but I plan to get a hard copy (having enjoyed the audiobook) so that I can use it as a reference book too. Related issues, such as employment and how we view ageing and looks, get a good outing too, together with cultural aspects of the menopause and how it affects people with extra needs. Frostrup and her fellow crusaders, who are “real women, campaigners, politicians, menopause experts, celebrities and journalists”, are aiming to increase pressure on the UK government to improve access to hormone replacement therapy and promote greater understanding of the impact of menopause. Good taste. But we’re still waiting for a #KnowYourMenopause selfie… Isn’t it just another celebrity menopause book? maybe because of this it reads like an anxiety inducing gloom, gloom, gloom another way you age and have to overcome it with products. Although she does cheer up in the epilogue.

It is unacceptable that you have used the name of my book,” tweeted Gunter this weekend. “Many people involved with your organiszation [sic] know it is the name of my book. ” The campaigners had called their online women’s health project The Menopause Manifesto, but Jennifer Gunter, the US gynaecologist and author of a book of the same name, published last spring, strongly objected.

Advance Praise

Due to “tireless campaigning”, the message continues, “It’s the biggest women’s issue of the moment.” It's high time we renovated and elevated this life change. Despite the centuries of speculation and propaganda, we are not overheating or inherently cold, we are not hysterics or boiling vats of toxic poisons, we are not dried up or washed up, we are simply menopausal. Plus, neither one is a doctor, so this is no dry medical tome that takes the life out of menopause. Nor is it a moanfest or an aspirational read (although Mariella gets inspirational about changing how menopause is viewed). It’s honest, educational and fun. A fun menopause book? I appreciate what the authors are trying to do, raise awareness of the menopause, so rating this is problematic because it was so boring, it could have been way shorter with bullet points, my eyes kept slipping ahead; significantly. One of my biggest bugbear with menopause books – especially celebrity menopause books – is that they feel they have to be “worthy” and teach a “lesson”. I don’t want that. I want a book that will explain menopause and have a bit of life and fun about it. You know, like 50Sense…