Andy Devaney
Meg Mathews was once better known for Britpop, parties and the sort of Nineties social calendar that probably required its own roadie. These days, though, Meg Mathews has swapped the old backstage blur for something far more useful: a full-throated campaign to help women navigate menopause without feeling as if they have been dropped into life’s rough with a blindfold on.
The former music industry PR, once married to Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher, now runs MegsMenopause.com and has written The New Hot: Taking On The Menopause With Attitude And Style.
It is a striking reinvention, but not a cosmetic one. This is not celebrity wellness sprinkled with scented candles and vague advice about “balance”. Mathews speaks about menopause as something that floored her, frightened her, and then gave her a reason to get up swinging.
“I never thought I’d be doing this at 54, but I love it,” she declares. “I enjoy every minute – I feel it’s the first time I’ve had a purpose in life and it feels amazing.”
From Britpop Party Girl To Menopause Campaigner
Mathews’ shift from hedonistic party fixture to menopause advocate came after her own experience left her shaken and searching.
“When it happened to me, I was about 48 or 49, not feeling myself. I didn’t really know what was going on, and I just thought: ‘Is this life? This can’t be natural, are other people going through this?’ And yes, they were – millions of them,” she says.
That is the heart of the Meg Mathews story now: the realisation that what felt like personal collapse was, in fact, part of a much wider silence around women’s midlife health.
She has described feeling constantly tearful, exhausted and as though she was “trailing through treacle”. Her GP prescribed antidepressants, which she took for two years, but they did not resolve what was really happening.
The clue finally came at an AA meeting, where Mathews spoke about exhaustion, sleeplessness, loss of libido, aching joints, anxiety and feeling overwhelmed. Another woman suggested menopause.
“She pointed it out to me and I thought, ‘Cheeky cow!’”
The woman was right. Mathews returned to her doctor, and the diagnosis was confirmed. She later discovered there are 34 common menopause symptoms, and I was rocking 30 of them”.
Menopause And Mental Health: The Missing Conversation
For many women, menopause is still lazily reduced to hot flushes and a fan kept within striking distance. Mathews’ experience was different.
“I never had a hot flush, my symptoms were all connected to mental health,” Mathews explains. “Nobody ever warned me that mental health was part of the menopause. I was overwhelmed by life, with terrible anxiety, not leaving the house for three months because I just couldn’t cope. We now know that oestrogen works that part of the brain and anxiety is a huge part of the menopause, but nobody had ever told me that.
“Everything was hard work, all the things I’d always loved – like the thought of going on holiday and having to pack. And I know it isn’t just me that’s felt like that.”
That last line matters. It moves the discussion from confession to public service.
Through MegsMenopause.com, Mathews quickly found a sizeable audience. The site was soon attracting 100,000 hits a month, a number that suggests women were not short of symptoms. They were short of clear information, shared experience and someone willing to say the quiet part loudly.
The Wider Health Picture
Menopause is not just about mood swings, night sweats or feeling as though your body has changed the locks without telling you. It can also be linked with wider health concerns, including increased heart disease risk after menopause and bone health issues such as osteoporosis.
For Mathews, that part was personal. She was diagnosed with weakened bones at 49. Having seen her mother affected by the condition and bedridden with it in the final years of her life, she says it “scared the living daylights” out of her.
This is where the conversation becomes less about enduring symptoms and more about prevention, medical awareness and knowing when to seek help.
“It’s all about prevention,” says Mathews. “I just thought I’m going to make this my mission, to make this knowledge for women. It baffles me that thousands and thousands of women just do not have a clue about [these things], and they should have.”
HRT, Hope And A Way Back
Mathews says she spent thousands of pounds trying alternative therapies, including tapping and reflexology, in the hope of easing her symptoms. Complementary therapies may help some people, and many women find value in them, but for Mathews the turning point came when she returned to her GP.
She was prescribed a body identical oestradiol gel, a form of HRT with the same molecular structure as a woman’s hormones.
“It saved my life, I was in such a dark place,” she says. “You just rub it on your inner thigh or arm. Within four or five nights, my night sweats had stopped and the anxiety went – not altogether, but it was so much better.”
The important point here is not that every woman’s answer will be the same. It will not. Menopause care should be discussed with a qualified health professional, especially for anyone weighing up HRT, medical history, risk factors and symptoms.
But Mathews’ experience underlines something vital: women should not be expected to simply white-knuckle their way through midlife and call it character building.
Food, Fitness And The Midlife Reset
Mathews is also frank about lifestyle. She is teetotal, vegan, and has been vegetarian since the age of nine, though she knows the contrast with her old image is not lost on anyone.
“It might sound a bit odd that someone who used to live on cigarettes, rum and recreational drugs is now almost fanatical about nutrition,” she writes in the book, which also contains advice on what types of foods and nutrients can help during menopause – including omega-3 fats from oily fish and nuts, which may help reduce hot flushes and night sweats, and protein, which can help increase muscle mass lost during this life stage, impacting metabolism and weight. “I’ve realised now that what you put into your body can make a huge difference to how you feel,” she adds.
Exercise has been another shift, though Mathews does not pretend to be one of those people who greets a dawn workout like a Labrador spotting a tennis ball.
During menopause, she felt lethargic and says she gained two stone. Now she walks her dog, does online workout classes, starts the day with 10 minutes of yoga, and even completed Couch to 5k, admitting she was “very impressed” with herself when she managed the full distance.
“Do whatever it is you enjoy,” Mathews advises. “I’m not a big lover of exercise, I do it because I’m vain and I like to eat. I’m not one of these people who’s gagging to exercise in the morning.”
That honesty is probably why her message lands. It is not a sermon from the mount. It is one woman saying: find what works, keep moving, and do not make the perfect the enemy of the vaguely sweaty.
Is The Book Worth Reading?
The New Hot: Taking On The Menopause With Attitude And Style is best suited to women who want a plain-speaking, lived-experience guide to menopause, particularly those who feel blindsided by anxiety, low mood, exhaustion, libido changes, sleep disruption or body changes.
It is also likely to resonate with partners, friends and family members who want to understand what menopause can actually feel like beyond the usual one-note jokes.
The strength of Mathews’ approach is that she does not present menopause as a tidy lifestyle inconvenience. She talks about the frightening bits, the humiliating bits, the medical confusion and the eventual recovery of purpose.
No Looking Back
Asked whether she would return to those wild party days, Mathews is decisive.
“Absolutely not! I have no regrets and had an absolute blast (at least the bits I remember!). However, I am now so much happier and more self-accepting, and menopause was my kicker to reassess everything,” Mathews says.
That may be the sharpest irony in the whole Meg Mathews journey. The thing that nearly broke her also gave her the clearest sense of direction.
“I get messages from hundreds of women every day and I feel I have one purpose in my life now, and that’s being a service to women, so that no woman should suffer like I suffered.”
For a woman once associated with Britpop’s loudest rooms, Mathews’ most powerful work may now be happening in a quieter space: the one where women finally feel heard.
The New Hot: Taking On The Menopause With Attitude And Style by Meg Mathews is published by Vermilion, priced £16.99. Available now.