Aussie TV favourite opens up about heartbreaking menopause battle - and reveals why it almost 'broke' her
The Today Extra presenter, 51, has long been open about her struggle with perimenopause and admitted to Stellar this week that the condition 'broke' her.
'I'm living proof that you can go through dark times and come out. It broke me... but I rebuilt,' she said.
Perimenopause typically affects women between 40 - 50 years old, and is the transitional phase before menopause where their hormone levels start to fluctuate, causing symptoms like irregular periods and mood changes.
Shelly added she hadn't even heard of perimenopause until she found herself in hospital in 2020 to undergo an ablation – a procedure to stop persistent bleeding.
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Doctors at the time told her that she might have cancer, sending her for an ultrasound.
When the test proved negative, doctors told her that she must be 'stressed' and to 'take up a hobby'.
'I drove home in tears, blaming myself, and didn't go and see another doctor for nine months,' she admitted.
Shelly added that it was a consultation with friend and TV medico Dr Ginny Mansberg that helped her understand her experience and dispel her preconceived notions about menopause.
'I had that stereotype in my brain of grey-haired old ladies clutching their pearls and fanning themselves,' she said.
'I didn't understand that perimenopause can last 10 years... so, in fact, I was right in the average age group.'
Shelly has since become an ardent spokesperson on the matter, sharing her experiences at the first parliamentary round table on menopause.
It was a historic moment, as it was the first time menopause had been mentioned in the Australian Parliament.
She is also set to release a book this week, I'm Your Peri Godmother, detailing her experiences, as part of a continued effort to de-stigmatise the issue that millions of women deal with.
It comes after Shelly shared the shock and heartbreak she felt when her doctor told her she would need to have a hysterectomy due to severe bleeding and perimenopause symptoms.
'I'm shocked at how overwhelmed and teary I feel about it' she wrote in her column for Nine Honey in 2024.
Shelly, who has been married to husband Darren Robinson for over a decade, added that while she has never wanted children, she has still felt some 'grief' over losing the reproductive organ.
'I'm proudly childfree by choice, so I am furious this organ that I haven't ever needed gives me so much misery,' she wrote.
'I've joked to friends I want to sell my uterus on eBay – "One uterus. Never used. Still in box!"
'Yet, just as I laugh, I also feel a mix of anger, sadness and a sense of betrayal by my own body.'
Shelly stressed that 'a uterus does not define a woman' and added her story is a 'call to action for all of us to redefine womanhood beyond biological functions.'
She has been open in the past about why she doesn't want to have children with her husband, and they are perfectly content to be raising a family that includes two dogs instead.
But Shelly admitted she was rattled by an email from a troll which labelled Horton as an 'obese feminist' he would like to see 'get off TV'.
The full email read: 'I'm so happy you don't have kids, now just to get you off TV would be the best Christmas gift any man could ask for. Obese feminist is nothing to be proud of.'
'Trolls don't normally worry me. I get messages like that a lot as do most women in the media,' she said the following day.
'But I've been working very long hours on some big new projects, so I was tired, he got under my skin. Thank you all for being my cheer squad... felt like a warm hug. Suck on that,' she added, referring to the email's author.
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With things like the Trier test, you might get a reaction the first time, and then you won't again – just understanding what the test is about is enough to destroy the effect.' This means you're unlikely to be suffering spikes in cortisol from the odd snippy Zoom call or altercation at the self-checkout – and, even if your body sees those situations as a threat to your wellbeing, there are other systems that kick in first. 'It's not just cortisol that goes up in stressful situations,' says Dr Thomas Upton, a clinical research fellow who also worked on the recent study. 'There are other hormones – like catecholamines, your adrenaline and noradrenaline – that play key roles in the immediate part of the fight-or-flight response. This is what helps you 'fight the lion' and get yourself out of the situation, followed up by cortisol release if the stress is strong enough or long enough. What you're feeling in a very stressful situation like a jump scare is a rush of adrenaline that makes your heart pound and your mouth go dry and all the rest of it.' Brief, short-term stress is probably not doing you any harm, then. But does this mean heightened cortisol becomes more of an issue when you're continuously stressed over the long term – for instance, from worrying about a family problem or the mortgage – or even deliberately putting yourself through too many difficult workouts? 'That's a bit trickier,' says Prof Clow. 'If you just have a short burst of perceived stress, you will have a little burst of cortisol. That's fine: your body will speedily return to normal cortisol secretion. But if you're chronically stressed, repeatedly getting these bursts, that can affect the regulation of your underlying circadian pattern, which is regulated by your biological clock. So that, instead of having a healthy dynamic pattern of cortisol secretion over each 24 hours, you get 'flat-lining', which is not able to regulate other processes adequately.' Constant stress, then, is probably bad for your cognitive function and health. But cortisol is unlikely to change how you look, unless there are larger problems at play. 'If you had Cushing's syndrome, which is a rare condition where cortisol levels in the body are very high, for example due to a tumour of the adrenal gland, then yes, you might gain extra weight around the stomach, or notice that your face becomes round and puffy,' says Niamh Martin, a professor of endocrinology at Imperial College London. 'But that tends to be with very, very high cortisol levels.' And, while it's true that something like a long run can elevate cortisol levels over the short term, that doesn't mean there's any need to ditch your plans for a new personal best. 'Doing, say, a marathon is a massively stressful situation for the body,' says Upton. 'You need a cortisol response in that situation, and there's nothing wrong with it: if you didn't have that response, the results would probably be terrible. You might actually die.' The good news, then, is that you can happily ignore the most outlandish advice about keeping cortisol in check with cocktails or cold plunges. Unless you're suffering from a clear medical issue, you probably also don't need to worry about how your cortisol's changing on a daily or hourly basis. Several companies are working on methods for continuously monitoring cortisol levels as you go about your everyday life – but even these could do most people more harm than good. 'Something that we've seen with glucose monitors is that they create a lot of 'worried well' people who put one on, have their breakfast and say, oh hell, my blood sugar's gone up too much,' says Lightman. 'And then they start worrying about doing all sorts of things and make themselves ill. If you're an Olympic sprinter or something, continuous monitoring might be useful. But, among most people, there's so much individual variation that the range we call 'normal' is huge.' There's one more obvious question here, though: if cortisol isn't the culprit, why does stress seem to go hand in hand with poor health, immune-system disruption and weight gain? 'It's very difficult to unpick,' says Martin. 'For instance, many of us have a complex relationship with food – and there are behavioural reasons why we eat besides being hungry – so it's easy to blame cortisol if we notice that we're gaining weight, but it might also be that, because we're stressed, we're eating in a different way. Similarly, you might be having a tough time at work and that means you don't have time to exercise, or you're not sleeping well because you're stressed and that's negatively affecting your cortisol levels, rather than the relationship going the other way. Part of the issue is that we still don't fully understand the chronic stresses that modern life involves and what their impact is on our bodies over a long period of time.' So what does all this mean for you and your life – stressful or otherwise? 'I think the most evidence-backed approach is to treat cortisol as something like a bystander, rather than blaming it for any issues you're having,' says Martin. 'If you're chronically stressed, that's something to deal with for health reasons, but it's not necessarily a question of artificially finding ways to keep your cortisol down – it's more holistic than that. The most important thing is to look after yourself, rather than reaching for an expensive supplement or a cortisol cocktail or anything like that.' 'There are a few things that seem to help keep cortisol well regulated,' says Clow. 'The research suggests, for instance, that the earlier you wake – within reason – promotes a healthy and dynamic cortisol rhythm. So getting plenty of sleep and then getting up relatively early seems to be very good for you. There's increasing evidence that night-time light exposure inhibits your melatonin secretion, which liberates cortisol and allows it to rise while you sleep.' It's worth mentioning, though, that getting enough sleep – and on a regular schedule – might be more important. Physical exercise seems to keep cortisol well regulated but, if you can't face the gym, that's not necessarily a bad thing. 'Gentle exercise, like walking, stretching or pilates, can regulate cortisol far better than an hour-long Hiit class on an empty stomach,' says Alderson. 'Breath work is amazing and you can do it anywhere. Micromoments of joy are a lot simpler to weave in than grand gestures like week-long yoga retreats – and, even if they're not directly affecting your cortisol, they matter more than people realise. A laugh, a hug, a walk in nature: this stuff really matters.' Finally, it's important to remember that, even if modern living does occasionally nudge your hormones outside optimal levels, cortisol is on your side. Your body's stress response to most things should be good for you. Try to get some exercise every day, sleep on a regular schedule, and eat as sensibly as you can. Don't worry about the other stuff: you really don't need the stress.
