Claire Richards, 45, has opened up about perimenopause (Picture: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images)
Steps icon Claire Richards has spoken candidly about the anxiety she experienced during menopause.
The pop star, 45, has revealed she started suffering from heart palpitations last year while filming for ITV’s The Masked Singer, where she competed as Knitting.
However, Claire was reluctant to seek treatment until her symptoms worsened, to the point where she was too anxious to leave her Surrey home.
In a new interview, the Tragedy hitmaker explained: ‘This last year has been a weird one. I started getting perimenopause symptoms and I was like, “Hold on a second, I don’t like this”.
‘When I was doing The Masked Singer, the anxiety was horrendous. I was having the worst palpitations, pounding through my neck. I didn’t feel I could give it my best at all.’
She told The Mirror that it took her ‘a long time’ to address what was happening, as it felt like a ‘milestone’ in her life.
She started having hot flushes and palpitations while on The Masked Singer (Picture: ITV)
Claire got to a point where she was too anxious to leave her house (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
‘You kind of feel like you’re shrivelling up from the inside out,’ the mum-of-two admitted.
‘I’m not an angry person at all, but you can feel it rising. My husband knows I’m going through something and he’s been really patient.’
As well as her husband Reece, who Claire married in 2008, she was also full of praise for Davina McCall.
The former Big Brother host, 55, has been incredibly vocal about her own experiences with menopause and made documentaries to raise awareness.
What is menopause?
The menopause is when a woman stops having periods. It’s a natural part of ageing that usually happens between 45 and 55 years old.
Symptoms of the menopause include hot flushes, night sweats and vaginal dryness.
The main treatment for menopausal symptoms is hormone replacement therapy. Not all women need treatment.
And as she uses HRT oestrogen spray to combat her own symptoms, such as hot flushes, Claire is starting to ‘feel more like myself’.
This isn’t the first time Claire has spoken openly about her mental health.
The 5, 6, 7, 8 songstress has battled eating disorders and weight fluctuations in the past, but she still worries about what other people think of her.
The Steps icon has admitted she still worries about what others think of her (Picture: Anthony Harvey/REX/Shutterstock)
Claire has also battled eating disorders in the past (Picture: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
When asked if she was happier than ever late last year, she replied: ‘I think so. When I hit 40, my outlook changed. I am not 20 anymore. When I was 20, I hated the way I looked and I was starving myself to look that way.
‘I still worry about what I look like and what people think of me, but it’s more fleeting than it was back then.’
She added to Bella: ‘It doesn’t consume me anymore because if people don’t like me by now, they’re never going to.’
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She was having heart palpitations last year.