Gwyneth Paltrow has admitted that she has been struggling recently as she goes through the menopause and has found drinking makes it worse.
The Oscar-winning actress and Goop founder, 52, described herself as “really in the thick of it” and with her head and emotions “all over the place”.
While she says her symptoms are usually “pretty well under control”, that all went out of the window when the deadly wildfires broke out throughout Southern California on January 7, leading her to turn to alcohol.
Speaking on the latest episode of her Goop podcast, which dropped on Tuesday, the Shallow Hal star explained: “I'm really in the thick of it right now, so I'm all over the place.
“But I noticed my symptoms are, like, pretty well under control unless, you know, in January when the fires were happening in L.A. I've, like, used alcohol for its purpose. I think I drank every night. I was medicating.
“Normally, now at this point, I don't drink a lot at all. Maybe I'll have one drink a week,” Paltrow continued, but added her symptoms “were completely out of control. It was the first time I really noticed, like, causation in that way.”
She also went on to discuss how she has been having trouble with insomnia - an issue she did not have before reaching this transformative stage in her life.
“I've always been a real sleeper,” she noted, adding that after menopause, “I went through a particularly bad time with it.
“There were nights where my anxiety - like, I just thought it meant, ‘Oh, you're not gonna be able to sleep because you don't have enough progesterone or whatever.’
The mum-of-two continued: “I would just wake up [and] I would get crushed with anxiety, which I've never had in my life.
“And I would lie in bed thinking about every mistake I've ever made, every person's feelings I ever hurt, like, every bad, you know - And I would be up, like, for six hours. It was crazy. I feel like hopefully I'm coming out the other side.”
Paltrow was joined on her podcast by Dr Mary Clare Haver, who offered a medical insight on what she is experiencing.
Dr Haver said: “In perimenopause, we call it the zone of hormonal chaos. It's all over the place. It is completely unpredictable, and our brains hate chaos.
“It's years for some women,” the medical professional added, with the Iron Man actress replying, “I feel like I've been in it for years.”
