‘I thought I was going to die every night’: Oprah opens about her experience with menopause

Oprah, 68, has opened up about the terrible symptoms she experienced during menopause, revealing that she suffered from heart palpitations so severe that she “thought she was going to die.”

The TV host recently detailed her struggles with menopause, a process that signals the end of a woman’s menstrual cycle and can include mild or mild symptoms, hoping to destigmatize the natural aging process.

Sitting down with her friend Maria Shriver on an episode of Paramount Plus’s The Checkup With Dr. David Agus, the media mogul explained that while she didn’t experience hot flashes like many women, she did suffer horrifying palpitations that left her fearing for her life.

Winfrey explained that her symptoms worsened, and the TV mogul admitted that she often lay up at night frantically wondering if she was going to survive until the next day.

“I have journals full of: ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it until morning,'” she shared. ‘I thought I was going to die every night.’

While experiencing menopause, the presenter added that she began to feel restless and couldn’t concentrate enough to read, prompting her to end ‘Oprah’s Book Club’.

Perhaps one of her most extreme symptoms was heart palpitations, she revealed.

“I was perimenopausal, like in my late 40s, and I had heart palpitations.

“Going to every possible doctor to try to find out what it is, what it is, what it is,” he recalled.

Winfrey explained that she went to five different doctors, desperately trying to find a treatment and a cause for her heart palpitations.

She described going to a cardiologist who prescribed heart medication and did an angiogram, which is a scan that shows the flow of blood through arteries, veins, or the heart.

“No one ever suggested that it might be menopause,” Winfrey said.

Part of the reason Winfrey said she was in pain was because she suffered from a lack of knowledge on the subject and had never had someone in her life to discuss it with, adding that her mother was a “very closed person.”

‘I couldn’t get my mother to talk about it. She was just trying to figure out what are the chances of her having hot flashes or something,” the author said before pointing out that her mother didn’t even remember her body going through menopause.

‘My mother was a very, you know, closed off person. [and] I think I had no symptoms that she recognized.

“I think if you don’t have hot flashes, which I didn’t have hot flashes, then you don’t understand mood swings.”

Shriver echoed Winfrey’s concerns regarding the lack of information and stigma surrounding menopause, noting that the couple are “adamant” about calling attention to themselves because many women often fail to recognize the various symptoms.

“I think women think, ‘Oh, menopause means the end of my period,’ but they don’t connect the dots of palpitations, anxiety, depression, apathy, lack of concentration.

“They don’t understand that it’s actually happening in the brain first and that all of these emotions that they may be going through are physical changes that they may be going through that can be associated with or attributed to perimenopause or menopause.”

Throughout their discussion, both Winfrey and Shriver explained that society has misrepresented the aging of women and has failed to provide a substantial amount of knowledge.

‘The whole culture is set up to tell you what is most natural. We are surrounded by these beautiful trees here,” she said while pointing to the interview scene.

That literally gets better with age. I think we all get better with age: culture is set up to tell us, in our particular society, that it’s the wrong thing to do,” Winfrey said.

Shriver agreed, adding, “I think the fact that menopause is re-commercialized by women is not something to fear, it’s not something to drive you crazy.”

“There’s this whole zeitgeist thing (that) menopausal women are crazy, and then women are crazy in general.

“The stigma will go away if women feel empowered and feel that nothing is wrong with them if they talk about these problems that they are going through.”

“Especially for black women,” Winfrey added. “We’ve been known to put up with a lot and be the strong ones and keep going no matter what.”

The Checkup With Dr. David Agus also features “intimate conversations” about various health issues with celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Howie Mandel, Amy Schumer, Nick Cannon, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin.

The cancer specialist and CBS News medical contributor hosts the show and discusses the difficult health issues the stars have faced and how these struggles affected their family members.

“These artists were willing to take us deep into their own health stories, often for the first time in such revealing ways.

“Their stories are captivating and terrifying, yet ultimately uplifting and inspiring,” said Agus.

The Checkup With Dr. David Agus with guest Oprah will premiere on Paramount Plus.