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FROM CHANGING ROOMS TO CHANGING WOMBS – LINDA BARKER TALKS TO LAUREN TAYLOR ABOUT TACKLING MENOPAUSE TABOOS AND EMBRACING POSITIVE AGEING

- LAUREN TAYLOR

LINDA Barker says one of the most upsetting symptoms of the menopause for her was hair loss.

“I had frontal lobe alopecia for a while – horrible, you know? Thank goodness it stopped, for some women it doesn’t stop,” says the 61-year-old.

The TV personality and interior designer, who rose to fame on BBC’s Changing Rooms in the 1990s, says she wasn’t offered any help by doctors.

“[They said] Oh, we don’t deal with hair loss. It’s like, I’m not a bloke, I’m a woman in her 50s who’s experiencing some hair loss...

“That was awful.”

Hair loss and thinning is a common menopause symptom, but still taboo in many ways. As a woman, Linda felt her hair was “an identity, your crowning glory”, adding: “Silly in many ways, I know, but that’s just the way it is.”

She first started experiencing menopause symptoms at 48, including brain fog, hot flushes and anxiety – which she found particularly difficult to deal with.

“I felt anxious in a way that I never had done before, slightly panicky before events. I’ve done live events and telly [for years] and nothing really bothered me. And then all of a sudden, I found that I was anxious about turning up to certain events,” Linda explains.

“I remember going to a speaking event and was just utterly in panic,” she shares. “I just didn’t want to do it, I was dreading it and my mind was taking over, going, ‘You can’t do it’. I was driving and I thought, ‘I don’t mind if my car breaks down’.”

The forgetfulness she experienced was “hideous” too. “Forgetting where your keys are or forgetting people’s names. It’s like, why am I not as sharp as I used to be?”