Gabrielle Union is opening up like never before about an experience many women go through; menopause. In a conversation with PEOPLE, she explains that she started to notice a transition in her body at the age of 37.
“I just felt off, that’s probably the most accurate way I could describe it,” she explained. Once she went to the doctor and got her blood work done, she was told that she was in perimenopause.
Gabrielle Union Approaching Menopause
“I was just like, not me. I just left the club. That’s like an old woman thing,” she said.
Perimenopause is the stage of a woman’s body cycle where it starts to make its natural transition to menopause.
Union said that when it came to symptoms, her biggest struggle was hair loss.
“All of it can feel very isolating and you can feel like less of a woman, especially as a Black woman where our hair is our crown. There’s literally the CROWN Act and I’m like, uh, my crown looks more like a barrette at this moment,” she explained.
Union has announced that she has partnered with Clearblue to promote its Menopause Stage Indicator. It is a urine test that connects to a health tracking app to be able to give women information on what stage of menopause they’re in.
“I love that through the app, you can not just track when your period came, you can document when you have symptoms, the severity of those symptoms, exactly what is happening,” she said. “So when you are in the doctor’s office, you have all the information that can tell the doctor everything that you’ve been experiencing in one place.”
“The more we talk about it, the more we are in community with one another, the more we share resources, we’re all literally in this together,” she shared. “It’s coming for everybody. So let’s get prepared.”