Jackie McGregor: Why the menopause leaves women lost for words

It’s been my experience that when you reach midlife, a breakout of talking gobbledygook occurs. I’ve been battling it for a while. I frequently can’t find the word I want to say, or I come out with something nonsensical or deeply inappropriate. It had gotten so bad that I thought I was developing early onset Alzheimer’s! I had to have a brain scan for an unrelated condition and fortunately nothing sinister was detected, but I had braced myself for the worst.

It’s common for some women to worry that fumbling for words and memory loss is down to something like the beginnings of dementia. Lorraine Kelly admitted that she would walk into a room and not remember why she was there, and Davina McCall has spoken of how she couldn’t recall her co-presenter’s name on live television. She claimed her mind felt like a blank page and thought she might be going mad, because of her recurring brain fog.

These memory problems in middle-aged women are usually down to the menopausal transition.

Here’s the science bit; it’s all down to the effect of changing hormone levels on the female brain. Dips in progesterone and oestrogen can cause a host of symptoms including hot flushes, extreme fatigue and sleep disturbance. Loss of oestrogen inhibits the ability of the brain to function optimally, hence, cloudy thinking and the difficulty in remembering the right words or why you went into a room.

Studies show that just over 60 per cent of women experience cognitive difficulties during menopause, but it is likely to be temporary. I hope it is! Sometimes my brain is so busy searching for the right word, I feel like I might be buffering! I wonder if little circles can be seen rotating in my eyes, as my brain struggles to get back online?

Mistakenly substituting the wrong word can be embarrassing. Last night, I was seated with my family having dinner, as we watched a television quiz show. A question came up asking for titles of books written by Roald Dahl. I shouted out an answer triumphantly and turned to my husband and son for acknowledgment of my cleverness, only to see them staring at me oddly.

“What?” I asked, “I got it right!” and I repeated the title again. “It’s The Twits,” said my husband. “What did I say?” I queried; certain I was right. “Let’s just say you got all the right consonants in the right order, but your choice of vowel was unfortunate!” he responded.

I buffered momentarily, trying to compute what he meant, elevator music played in my head as my brain struggled to resume normal service, finally the penny dropped! My mouth formed a little O shape in surprise, and I coloured puce.

Darn this lack of oestrogen and these pesky semantic slip-ups!