Lorraine Kelly will be interviewed on her own TV show about her experiences with the menopause as part of a drive to encourage more women to talk about the “taboo” subject.
The TV presenter, 57, will launch the M Word campaign on Monday after research conducted for her ITV show Lorraine found 54% of women have not spoken to their parent about the menopause.
The programme’s resident medical expert Dr Hilary Jones is urging women to find out when their mothers started going through the menopause in order to give them more information about what to expect – and when they might go through it themselves.
Kelly will be interviewed by Dr Jones as she speaks for the first time on TV in detail about her own experience of the menopause, which happened last year.
Dr Jones said: “There is definitely a genetic link between the age a mum and daughter experience the menopause.
“Yet parents will more readily discuss sex and periods with their daughters than the menopause.
“This is likely because periods are more urgent and happen suddenly whereas the menopause can take several years and can drift by.”
He added: “The menopause will affect all women at some point yet it’s still unfortunately a great taboo. We need to share our experiences to help one another.
“We hope this campaign will break that taboo and encourage more women to talk about the menopause openly.”
The research discovered that, out of the 2,000 women surveyed, 61.9% did not know how old their mother was when she started going through the menopause.
Embarrassment and fear over sounding old were among the top reasons those in the study cited for not speaking out about the transition.
Forty-five per cent of women said they were not able to discuss the menopause with friends.
The M Word campaign launches on Lorraine at 8.30am on ITV.
