Michelle Obama Details Her Experience With Menopause As First Lady: “It Was Like Somebody Put A Furnace In My Core And Turned It On High”

– Written by @kristenshylin_

With every episode of The Michelle Obama Podcast, the forever first lady continues to dive deeper into her personal life.

According to Harper’s Bazaar, on the latest podcast with Dr. Sharon Malone, Michelle Obama addressed menopause, detailing her experience.

“I have a very healthy baseline, and also, well, I was experiencing hormone shifts because of infertility, having to take shots and all that,” Obama said. “I experienced the night sweats, even in my 30s, and when you think of the other symptoms that come along, just hot flashes, I mean, I had a few before I started taking hormones.”

During her talk with the gynecologist, she also highlighted the time she experienced a hot-flash on Marine One as the first lady.

“I remember having one on Marine One,” Obama said. “I’m dressed, I need to get out, walk into an event, and, literally, it was like somebody put a furnace in my core and turned it on high, and then everything started melting.”

Mrs. Obama also shared her husband, Barack Obama’s response to menopause. He learned to adjust to it because he had several women in his staff, she said.

“He didn’t fall apart because he found out there were several women in his staff that were going through menopause. It was just sort of like, ‘Oh, well, turn the air conditioner on.'”

During the 40-minute segment, Obama also discussed how she believes men are misinformed about the effects of women’s hormones on their bodies.

“How many men, do you think, could deal with the severest form of cramps? Which literally feels like a knife being stabbed and turned, and then released. And then turned! And then released. And you got to do that, and you got to get up and keep going [snaps]. It’s like, go to work, go to school, go play on the basketball court. Every woman who’s playing a sport now is doing it through all those circumstances. And I don’t know any men who could possibly conceive of what that feels like,” Obama elaborated.

Obama added that women should not be afraid of aging and the changes that it brings; instead, they should embrace it.

“When you think of all that a woman’s body has to do over the course of her lifetime, going from being prepared to give birth to actually giving birth, and then having that whole reproductive system shut down in menopause, right? The changes, the highs and lows, and the hormonal shifts, there is power in that,” she added. “But we were taught to be ashamed of it and to not even seek to understand it or explore it for our own edification, let alone to help the next generation.”