Most individuals with intervals are conscious that menopause is of their future, however that doesn’t essentially make the signs any much less stunning. For Halle Berry, there was one, particularly, that threw her for a loop—and significantly messed along with her intercourse life.

Final night time, Berry, 57, candidly shared the main points of how, precisely, throughout a sit-down dialog with Ceek Girls’s Well being CEO Fahti Khosrowshahi in New York Metropolis. On the occasion, hosted by nella speculum and rē•spin (Berry’s wellness platform), the Oscar-winning actor remembered being in “the most effective time” of her life along with her accomplice. “I’ve been by way of three divorces and at last discovered the precise one,” she informed Khosrowshahi.

Then, swiftly, menopause hit, and issues modified within the bed room—and never within the enjoyable, spicy manner. “Okay, TMI however prepare: I’m making an attempt to have intercourse and [it’s as if] I’ve bought razor blades in my vagina,” Berry recalled. “He comes at me with [what feels like] scissors at night time, and I’m like, ‘Get away!’ However he’s the love of my life, and I notice there’s one thing mistaken.”

Together with ache throughout intercourse, she additionally began to expertise mind fog, sleep issues, and moments of rage. She informed her physician on the time, “I can’t bear in mind why I walked right into a room. I’m confused all of the goddamn time…I don’t sleep at night time. I get up drained, and I’m like, ‘What’s occurring to me?’”

Her physician confirmed that she was going by way of menopause—which, if you happen to didn’t know, is a part marking the tip of an individual’s interval (normally of their 40s and 50s, per the Mayo Clinic). Together with extra well-known signs like scorching flashes and temper swings, painful intercourse is one other fairly widespread expertise, in keeping with the Workplace on Girls’s Well being. That’s as a result of ranges of the hormone estrogen drop throughout this time, which may trigger vaginal tissue to get drier and thinner, leading to itching, burning, or ache throughout intercourse.

Regardless of her preliminary frustration, although, Berry isn’t letting these well being challenges derail her life. “I’m not able to exit to pasture. I’ve bought all this new stuff to do,” she stated, acknowledging that menopause doesn’t must be a dying sentence. “It’s not the tip of something,” she added. “It’s truly the beginning of a brand new chapter of your life. As ladies…we now have to reimagine what that’s.”

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