Penny Lancaster has admitted she worried she'd "lose" her sex appeal after going through the menopause.
The Loose Women presenter, 50, who is married to Rod Stewart, 76, feared it would be "the end of the road" for her and was convinced she wouldn't be as "lenient or forgiving" after going through the menopause.
Speaking about her personal experience in this week's Hello! magazine, Penny said: "The menopause freaked me out at first. I thought, 'This is the end of the road. I’m not going to have any more sex appeal, I’m not going to be as lenient or forgiving. I’ve got to say goodbye to the old Penny and say hello to the new one.
"But as you get older you embrace each stage of your life with more maturity, and give yourself a bit of a break."
Penny appears alongside her fellow celebrities including presenter Nadia Sawalha, Olympian Michelle Griffith Robinson, actress Julie Graham and make-up artist Ruby Hammer in a special 'menopause matters' edition of Hello!.
Nadia, 56, also opens up about how she feared she was suffering with early on-set Alzheimer's when she went through the change herself.
"Over time the symptoms became part of me. My anxiety had become who I was," she recalled.
Penny recently shared how she battled through menopause anxiety as she said how she "never quite understood" it until it happened to her.
She revealed: "When I joined Loose Women, I’d sit back and listen to you more mature ladies at the time - but now I’ve caught up with you - thinking, ‘Really, is it that bad?’
"And never quite understanding it. I think that’s half the problem. It’s not until it hits you literally from every angle that you think, ‘This is what you’re all talking about.'"
"Because we’re so good at hiding and putting a mask on and a band aid on the problems, just getting on with life, making sure everyone else is ok - the house is running, the kids are off to school and the husbands - all these different roles that we play and working in between and we forget about ourselves," she continued.
Penny confessed to feeling "guilty" about being upset because of it.
She added: "You feel guilty for being upset. You go for a coffee with a friend and they say, ‘How are you?’ And then you burst into tears and you don’t know why you’re crying."
Read the full story in this week's Hello! magazine.
