Cracking the Menopause: While Keeping Yourself Together

Product Information

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 Guide Due to “tireless campaigning”, the message continues, “It’s the biggest women’s issue of the moment.” And it does it in a light-hearted way without dumbing down and without emphasising one factor or treatment over others. It is a thorough, complete guide that is a delight to read. Anyone who reads it will come away with new information and a fresh insight into the state of menopause today.

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. I was wary about two authors – generally a journalist is hired to rewrite support the celebrity. But Mariella is a respected journo in her own right and having the two voices works well. It’s like a signpost to “Fact” and “Experience” rather than becoming blended into one. And one thing I’ve found in MenoLand is that anecdote and feelings are quite often read as “data” so there is a clear difference here. 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.

Answering all these questions and more, Mariella shares her own journey through the menopause – along with the latest science and funny illustrations – to provide an informative source of wisdom, humour and enlightenment.

If you want to discover all the answers to your most burning menopause questions (no pun intended), then keep listening... Eventually publication day came round and I bought the Kindle edition so I could get it straight away. Which actually means you can rest assured – as far as I’m concerned, this review has no PR link whatsoever and I am under no pressure (from me or anyone else) to be nice! 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.

Advance Praise

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.

Good taste. But we’re still waiting for a #KnowYourMenopause selfie… Isn’t it just another celebrity menopause book? 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 enlightening audiobook is passionately narrated by the authors, Mariella Frostrup with Alice Smellie. 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?It delivers this over 12 chapters, beginning by destroying the myths surrounding menopause over the centuries and looking at the science and ideas behind menopause through symptoms, HRT, diet, exercises and relationships to facing the future post-menopausal (and it’s not bleak). 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 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. My quest for inclusive information about the menopause continues. This book started well, as you might expect from a journalist Mariella Frostrup opens with a thorough and detailed description of what menopause actually is, including the difference between peri-menopause and post menopause, as well as detailing the hormones whet they do for us and how their changes affect us. It then began to lose its way a little and became much more of her own particular experience of the menopause and whilst that was helpful in understanding more about her particular issues insomnia, hot flushes and brain fog, there was less space for understanding the other numerous symptoms although some are mentioned, I would have welcomed an equally deep exploration of the full range of symptoms.