Davina McCall: I feared I had Alzheimer's due to menopause memory loss

Davina McCall has revealed she feared she was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease after suffering memory loss.

The 53-year-old TV presenter – whose father has Alzheimer’s – revealed she began the perimenopause nine years ago and mistook her symptoms of menopausal memory loss for dementia.

McCall told Gabby Logan’s podcast The Mid.Point: “I’m on HRT so I have absolutely no excuse to be going doolally but I’m still going doolally on the HRT.

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“I am less angry. I don’t get night sweats. I don’t get hot flushes. These are the things that have gone.

“My joints feel, my bones feel lubricated and strong, but my memory, and like you Gabby, I work, I’ve got kids, I have a partner.

“Life is very busy and chaotic and you have to know a lot of stuff in your business about sort of everything. And I do lots of different jobs. So I have a hundred different hats on.

“I could be going from Long Lost Family one day, to The Masked Singer the next, to a Garnier job, to something else.

“And I’m learning different things for everything in my brain sometimes, because when I went to my doctor and I said, ‘Look, please help me, I think I’ve got Alzheimer’s because obviously my dad’s got Alzheimer’s.’

“And I was like, ‘I’m always paranoid – I know I haven’t really got it but am I okay?’ to her.

“She said, ‘It’s called cognitive overload’. And at our stage in life often our kids are all older. We thought it was going to get easier. It does not.”

McCall has three children, Holly, 19, Tilly, 17, and Chester, 14, with her ex-husband Matthew Robertson. She is currently in a relationship with hairdresser Michael Douglas.

The Masked Singer judge paid tribute to her father on Instagram last November as she marked his 76th birthday.

She wrote: “Happy birthday Daddy!!!! Sorry I can’t be with you but thank you for giving the Best Hugs! And always picking up the pieces when my world fell apart . You have taught me so much! Alzheimers is a very cruel illness, but your soul is still shining through ... love you so much.”

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Last year McCall opened up about her experiences of the menopause, likening the symptoms to the side effects of her heroin addiction.

She told Loose Women during the ITV show’s Menopause Week: “Obviously I’m a reformed addict and I was waking up soaked in sweat, having to put towels on the bed, thinking 'there’s something wrong with me, I've got the flu or a virus or something’. It really reminded me of when I was using and I really hated it."

Watch: Davina McCall talks about starting the menopause in her 40s