Mel B always had fans — plural. Now, at 50, the Spice Girl has a singular fan. That she carries with her everywhere. To manage her hot flashes.
Before she learned it was menopause that was causing her sudden onset night sweats, brain fog, anxiety and vaginal dryness, the pop music royal (and her “quite a few years younger” husband) wondered if she might just be “losing her marbles.”
“I’d be talking, I’d lose my train of thought,” Mel, whose full name is Melanie Janine Brown, tells The Post. “I’d go into a room and think, ‘What have I come into this room for?’ And it was starting to really annoy me. I was starting to get quite worried.”
She figured maybe someday down the line menopause would find her, but she didn’t know it was something practically all women will experience by their late 40s or early 50s, per the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR).
She attributes her ignorance to a culture that muzzles discussion of experiences that are nearly universal for girls and women.
“It was taboo. […] I don’t think that’s fair on women, because it’s not like, oh, 25% of women are gonna go [through it] — no, 100% of women, and apart from that odd few, you’re gonna go through it.”
Each day in the US, roughly 6,000 women reach menopause, according to SWHR, which is typically marked by the one-year anniversary of the last menstrual period and results in a major decrease in estrogen.
“So why are we not talking about it? Why are our doctors not educated more?” Brown asks.
When she finally put the symptoms together, she wanted to know she wasn’t alone. But as the old saying goes: Friendship never ends — not even for menopause.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, well, does anybody else have it?’ And [I] find out all the Spice Girls have it.”
When it comes to taking care of her health during this stage of life, Brown has several new priorities. Overall, she says, “you just have to look after yourself more.”
For starters, she partnered with Revive Collagen to promote their latest line of subscription menopause supplements, Menopause Max, designed to support collagen production in the hair, skin and nails during this more vulnerable life phase.
The body loses up to 30% of its collagen during the first five years after menopause, according to Boulder Medical Center dermatologists, “which directly affects skin thickness, elasticity and firmness.” That can serious contribute to visible signs of skin aging.
The science is still developing on collagen supplements’ effect on things like skin and hair, but Brown’s a certified devotee to the little purple sachets, which can be taken alongside menopause medications, like hormone therapy, that help manage physical symptoms.
“I don’t put my name to just anything,” she insists. “I tried it, and I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. It’s brilliant.” She liked it so much, she says, she gave testers to the other Spice Girls.
But her menopausal self-care doesn’t stop there. At the gym, she’s prioritizing more weight-training over cardio, “because as you get older, our bone density needs that extra help.”
Strength training becomes especially important as women age, because building muscle can help prevent osteoporosis and bone loss, and assist the metabolism when it otherwise starts to slow down.
Brown is also transforming her relationship to sleep — in that she’s finally trying to get some.
She’s committing to six hours per night, she says, a real upgrade from before when she was regularly getting closer to three or four.
“I mean, I’ve got three kids,” she explains, and there were times when she was “up every four hours feeding the baby.”
“I thought that was the norm. ‘Oh, I can survive on minimal sleep.’ Actually, no, you can’t, especially when you go into the menopause.”
Menopause and perimenopause — the time before menopause when hormones start to dysregulate — are infamous disruptors of sleep.
Not only do they bring about hot flashes that wake sufferers up in pools of sweat, but the drop in estrogen and progesterone can also lead to the development of certain sleep disorders like sleep apnea, according to Johns Hopkins.
And lastly, Brown is working on building pride — hers and others’ — around this lifestage that so often gets hushed and overlooked.
“You don’t have to have a sign on your face saying ‘I’m going through the menopause,’” she says. But it doesn’t all have to be so scary-spice.
“I’m like, listen, we’re all going to go through [it] at some point, so why not be loud and proud about it and just talk about it?”
Such transparency is like an ice pack during a hot flash: zig-a-zig-ahhh.
