KATHRYN Thomas has opened up about a “challenging time” in her life that led her to make lifestyle changes.
The popular presenter recently took up a new role at Q102 hosting The Morning Show with Kathryn Thomas from 7 to 10am on weekdays.
Kathryn recently appeared on Dermot Whelan’s The Mind Full podcast, where she opened up about how her friend’s shock diagnoses started a change in her lifestyle.
The popular presenter revealed to the comedian that one night she suffered a panic attack, something she hadn’t experienced since her twenties.
However, before Kathryn experienced the panic attack she had been having minor symptoms that she initially thought could have been perimenopause.
Kathryn explained: “About two years ago, I was 44 and there was so much talk about perimenopause and I just thought, I wasn’t sleeping, zero libido and really kind of frazzled and forgetful.
“I would wake up and without even looking I would know what time it was and I would be awake for the night. I went to a female fertility clinic and talked to a great doctor there and they said, ‘Would you think about going on HRT?’
“And I said, ‘I think I’m a little bit young for that’ and she said, ‘Not necessarily’, and I knew myself that this was a big area for women and not something we should be embarrassed about.”
Kathryn then revealed that at around the same time she was experiencing these symptoms, her longtime pal was diagnosed with serious illness.
She said: “It was a very difficult time for her, for her family as she has young kids… that was a very challenging time to see her going through that and also it held a mirror up to me.
“I was just thinking, ‘Why her and not me, why her family and not my family’, and I remember going to bed one night, I had been to see her in the hospital I was doing what I do, came home, got into bed and I just had a massive panic attack.”
The presenter explained she knew what a panic attack was like and what they were as she had experienced some episodes while in college in her twenties.
She added: “They didn’t continue for me, they were from a time I was partying too hard and working two jobs… but this one really took the wind out of my sail, because I went, ‘Oh my god, where did that come out of?'”
The mum-of-two said at the time, she didn’t, “put two and two together” that the shock of her friends diagnoses and her chaotic schedule was leaving her feeling deflated and struggling to sleep.
She continued: “That was the start of the real change for me, my sleeping then got all over the place and I was working, all the balls up in the air juggling.
BIG CHANGE
“I went on HRT for six months thinking that was going to change my sleep, putting the no libido, panic attacks to perimenopause. But it didn’t really improve my sleep, it didn’t really improve a whole lot.
“So, that was when I did a whole life sit-down and went, ‘Where am I going? What am I doing? What do I want?'”
And after much back in forth in conversation with her husband, Kathryn realised a routine was the core aspect she was currently missing – something granted to her by her new role in Q102.
She explained: “I will go to bed now and be asleep by 10pm, put the girls to bed at 8:20pm. Put the phone away try not to doomscroll and trying to get back into reading my book.
“I was actually not giving myself enough time… and it’s working for me now I feel more energised and the brain fog, after I stopped taking HRT (it didn’t work for me).
“What actually did [fix it] was going to bed earlier, figuring out in my head I’m happy where I’m at, going to work with a smile on my face, playing really good tunes and dancing around my own studio.”
She finished: “Right now I’m glad that I’m feeling, awake, alive and energised because for two years I was operating on a half mast.”