Lisa Rinna is getting real about menopause and how sexuality changes with age.
“It’s really interesting when you go through menopause. I know it’s a drag for people to talk about menopause and it’s like, ‘Oh it’s a dirty secret and we don’t want to talk about it,’” the 60-year-old former star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” told Cosmopolitan in a new interview.
“But the truth is, you change. You’re not about making a baby. So, you’re not as crazy sexually driven — you just aren’t.”
Rinna said that when she first started having symptoms of menopause, she didn’t receive hormone therapy. Her mom and sister both had breast cancer and she worried about her risk of developing it, too, due to the medications.
“That was really terrifying because I thought, “Well, I can’t take hormones,’” she recalled. “I was really suffering.”
“Everything you can go through, I was going through it,” she added. “I couldn’t sleep, the hot flashes, everything, and I was anxious and angry and just a mess.”
Many people believe, like Rinna, that menopausal hormone therapy can increase the risk of breast cancer and other illnesses. However, more recent research shows hormone therapy is actually safe for many people and can even help them live longer, healthier lives.
“We now know for women close to the menopausal transition that hormone therapy can be safe and effective for relieving menopausal symptoms,” Dr. Janine Austin Clayton, director of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, said on TODAY in May. “The benefits can outweigh the risks.”
When Rinna spoke with her doctor, it changed her outlook.
“I have an Eastern-Western medicine doctor that I go to. And I went to him one day and he said to me, ‘Why aren’t you on hormones?’” she said.
The former “Days…
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