TV presenter Lisa Snowdon has spoken out about going through the menopause and her mission to break the stigma surrounding the issue.

She told GB News: “It affects everybody. It affects the men in our lives, the men that we live with, the men that we work with. It’s like it affects everybody. Yes, 51% of it affects us ladies directly, but it does have an impact on everybody.

“It’s amazing that we’re talking about it so much more openly now, and us women can understand the signs and the symptoms and can get the help that we need to feel better and to start taking control and sort of just really owning our menopause, because I’ve spoken soberly about it.

“It doesn’t have to be the end of your life. It can be the start of a really new relationship with yourself once you’ve got a handle on the signs and the symptoms.

“There are about 60 symptoms and counting with perimenopause and menopause, and that’s why it’s really hard to understand what’s happening.

“We have oestrogen receptors from the roots of our head to the tips of our toes, so we all experience a very different perimenopause and menopause.

“And perimenopause is the start when the hormones start declining, and then when you go into menopause, you go into it, not through it, and that’s kind of where you haven’t had a period for a year or more.

“It can be about ten years that process and like I said, everybody’s menopause and premenopausal symptoms are very different.

“But what I want to talk to you about today is the fact that it’s National Eye Health Week, and one of the symptoms that I didn’t know that I was going to be experiencing are eye changes.

“I’m working with Vision Express, and they’re the first optician on the high street to really upskill their clinical staff and train them in menopause and the link to eye health.

“It’s not only eyesight that starts to be affected, but a lot of us women experience dry eyes, which is what I’ve got, which doesn’t sound like much, but it is really quite debilitating.

“You could get very sore eyes, really gritty, itchy. They can be very kind of watery as well. And what happens is the glands around the eyes get really blocked, so the oil stops producing, and it can have, obviously, an impact on your vision and make everything blurry as well.

“I want to encourage people to get their eyes tested. A lot of women, I think it’s over a quarter of women over 45, didn’t realise the impact that the menopause was going to have on that eye health, not only for vision, but also the other things that you can experience before.

“Eye health is really important, not only to make sure that you get your eye test, eyes tested regularly, but do the advanced eye test, because it will look at the overall health of your eyes, and it can be prevented.”